The Patriots
by THELEGOMack
Summary: A story set in the Hotline Miami universe following three men—a patriotic Miami PD officer forced into killing, an adrenaline junkie with a taste for violence, and a mercenary operating in Soviet Russia—as they take on the criminal underground with uncertain motives.
1. Investigation

**10:03 PM**

**March 30th, 1989**

**Miami, Florida**

With a firm hand, Adrian rapped three times on the door of apartment 104. The raging of a party emanated from behind the door as he counted the seconds in which no response came. He knocked again, a little harder, and still received no feedback. As he prepared to knock a third time, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged man in a white pastel suit.

"What the fuck do you want?" He growled in a thick Russian accent, clearly holding no respect for Adrian's uniform.

"Miami PD, sir. There have been reports of illicit activity taking place at this residence." Adrian held up his police badge in one hand and a search warrant in the other. "I'll need to come inside."

The Russian looked Adrian up and down for a few seconds as his mouth twisted into a bitter scowl, cold eyes flicking between the officer's badge, warrant and cap. He finally folded his arms and stepped out of the way.

Without so much as a cursory glance back at the man, the police officer made his way into the spacious, well-furnished apartment. The sounds of the party quickly died down, with quiet, contemptuous discussion forming in their wake down across the carpeted foyer before him.

Turning the corner to his left, Adrian discovered a scene not completely unexpected: Three men, all in identical pastel suits over blue shirts, lounged around a circular table. With one seat vacant, these men and the one at the door must have been meeting here over a stockpile of unloaded firearms and packets of cocaine. A pistol cocked behind him as he was struck between the shoulder blades.

"Against the wall, _svolotch!_" The man who let him in barked from behind, shoving him up against the plaster wall. "Drop everything!" Adrian hesitated. "Drop your damn belt!" The mobster shouted, striking him again. Cautiously, Adrian removed his utility belt—holster, police radio and all—and began eying a switchblade left carelessly atop a munitions crate amongst half-empty vodka bottles and bundles of money. The men at the table began to murmur to each other in Russian. "Good," the man behind him said slyly, "now—"

Swiftly, Adrian grabbed the knife and whipped around, slashing open his subduer's throat. He missed his shot, firing off beside the officer's ear and deafening him. Adrian wrenched the blood-spattered Tokarev from the dying man's hand and took aim at the other three mobsters; the one sitting in the middle, given such little time to react, could only raise his shotgun before taking a bullet between the eyes. The other two, one armed with a golf club and the other with a hunting knife, merely arose from their chairs before they too were gunned down.

Adrian looked down at his hands as adrenaline began racing through him, magnified by the metallic reek of blood and the tinnitus screaming in his ears. Distant as it seemed, frantic shouting came from a room nearby.

Without hesitation, the police officer rushed forward and grabbed a shotgun from one of the dead mobster's hands before taking cover beside the door, prepared to kick it down.

The knob began to turn.

With a quick stroke of his leg, Adrian smashed the door open, knocking a Russian on the other side to his back. He turned to the closest figure in a uniform and squeezed the trigger—a spray of hot blood erupted from the criminal's abdomen as he stumbled backwards and collapsed to the carpeted floor.

The cop was deafened to all but the frantic beating of his own heart. He pulled the pump, took aim, and fired again.

A second mobster could only brandish a baseball bat before his arm was messily separated from his shoulder.

A confused shout came from behind another door across the foyer—a bathroom—and Adrian was swift to approach.

Pump.

Aim.

Squeeze.

The shotgun blast practically knocked the door from its hinges and sent the man on the inside backwards into the empty bathtub behind him.

Adrian's eyes darted around the room, looking for other doors or more armed men—but he found nothing more than tasteless neon decor soaked and sticky with blood. Behind him, however, was the man he had knocked down upon kicking the bedroom door in.

The dazed mobster slowly stood up, hands in the air and eyes wide with terror. Blood dribbled from a wound on his forehead. He began backing away from the barrel of Adrian's gun, saying some Russian words in a frightened and desperate tone of voice.

The officer blasted his head clean off.

As he solemnly washed the blood from his hands in the bathroom nearby, Adrian could feel the racing adrenaline wane. The world came back into focus, and the unpleasant and all-too-familiar stench of death came to him. Behind him, he could see in the mirror, a Russian man lay dead in the bathtub; the impact against the acrylic had ungraciously broken open the back of his skull. He walked out into the hall and tried not to stare at the corpses littered within the bedroom beyond. One lay unevenly across a bedspread, missing his right arm. Another was sprawled out on a blue shag carpet, intestines exposed. A third, headless, lay at his shoes. Adrian wondered if a lack of nausea at the sight of all this was a good thing.

At the kitchen sink, he dabbed the spots of blood from his uniform with a wet towel and gazed into the drain.

_"Someone will clean up after you leave,"_ said the voice on his answering machine that morning, _"please be discreet."_

_So much for discretion,_ Adrian thought bitterly as he finished cleaning himself off. He had no time to retrieve his disguise this time; the message on the phone instructed him to arrive at this address at strictly ten o'clock to take care of a "rat infestation," which was very shortly after he had gotten off of work. However, all it took was some improvisation and a meaningless sheet of paper he pretended was a warrant, and things seemed to work out smoothly nonetheless.

With a weary sigh, he stepped over another body and retrieved his utility belt from the floor in the corner.

He walked out of the apartment complex into the warm, humid night, and looked out at the bright, twinkling lights of the Miami skyline.

_We must make America strong again!_ the pamphlet proudly read when he received it many weeks ago. Little did he know at the time that this entailed pursuing the local mafia. He closed the door firmly behind him.

"I'm getting better at this," he said shamefully to himself as he walked away to his cruiser.

* * *

_Feedback would be very much appreciated! Thank you._


	2. Mania

**9:39 PM**

**April 15th, 1989**

**Miami, Florida**

Samuel checked his wristwatch with an indignant huff.

_Christ,_ he thought bitterly, _it's not even ten o'clock yet._ He trudged up the tough concrete stairs to the apartment block's second floor, and the monotonous buzzing of nearby fluorescent lights did little to help his patience. He shoved open the door into the hallway and walked the corridor's length as he meddled with his keyring, mail tucked under his arm.

"What bullshit," he grumbled to himself as he unlocked his apartment door.

He visualized what the party going on now must be like, and what fun he would be having had he not been kicked out by the host. Samuel wasn't even sure what it was—something he said, a rule he broke, what?—but they kicked him out without so much as a warning. He even brought the beer, too!

He closed the door harshly and stormed up to his desk at the window, haphazardly tossing onto it his bundle of papers and packages as he thoughtfully eyed the NES beside his television. So, it looked like game night. Again.

_Whoop-de-fucking-do._

However, as he sauntered over to his shelf of video games, a thought crossed his mind. He changed course and approached his phone, putting the receiver to his ear and playing back the answering machine.

_"You have one new message. Today, 7:34 PM."_

Another voice came on the line, familiar and stirring.

_"Hey, it's 'Adam' at the auto shop."_

Samuel began tapping his fingers on the phone receiver with excitement; it was Adrian's voice.

_"I was wondering if you could cover my shift for me tonight. I'm feeling a bit..."_

He let out a prolonged sigh.

_"I'm feeling a bit 'under the weather.' Our new location is on southeast 118th street, in case you've forgotten again. Do a good job for me, okay? I'll meet up with you for beer when you're done."_

Samuel placed the phone down and glanced over at his desk's bottom drawer, clearing the thoughts of the party from his mind. If Adrian was calling him in code like this he was tasked with a mission, and either having a bad day or wanting to bring his friend along. Judging by his tone of voice, Samuel figured that he would probably be showing up alone this time.

Samuel reached into the drawer and felt around, detecting thin rubber among papers and plastic pens. He pulled out the mask he was searching for and inspected its face: a perky-eared timber wolf stared back at him, its flat pink tongue sticking out like that of a dog happy to see its master after an evening away. It was the second mask given to him by Adrian as a gift, as well as the latest. With care, he stuffed it into his jacket.

As a combination of excitement and anxiety began welling up inside of him, Samuel scooped his keys off of the desk and donned his favorite pair of aviator sunglasses before stepping out the door. It looked like he would be having some real fun tonight after all.

• • •

Samuel gazed up at the bright neon sign on the building across the street as he brought his motorbike to a stop.

_Palm Drive Gentlemen's Club_, it boldly read in an eye-searing shade of magenta.

He dragged his gaze downwards to the sleek black sports car pulled up in front of the building. The guards at the front door, clad in familiar white uniforms—Russian gangsters, no doubt—gladly welcomed a man in a fancy suit that matched his chauffeur's vehicle. One guard shook the VIP's hand as the other twirled the end of a golf club, attentions diverted away from the killer watching them from across the dark street.

Samuel shook his head at the word 'killer.' He was a patriot first and an assassin second.

The guest strolled into the luxurious club as the guards followed in behind him and sealed the doors shut. Hesitantly, the car pulled away and sped off into the humid night. Presuming the entrance to be locked tight and heavily guarded, Samuel sneaked into an alleyway and made his way around the building. He came to a stop at the corner and listened, catching a conversation between two men; they spoke of prostitutes and some kind of score. As tension began to flutter in his stomach, Samuel let out a not-so-calming breath and tucked his shades into his pocket. Methodically, he slipped the mask over his head and prepared to strike.

All too quickly, the wolf was on the attack. He punched the rose-tinted glasses from one mobster's face and snatched the knife from his hand. As he reeled from the blow, his assailant slashed the blade through the second man's throat and kicked him into the side of a dumpster behind him. With the first gangster on the ground, the masked attacker thrust the knife into his chest.

The predator stepped back from the scene and assessed the vitality of his targets: quickly, they both bled out, turning their white jackets a sickly shade of dark red. His breath circulated hot and humid in his mask, and his veins flowed with adrenaline, the most potent natural drug. He whipped his head to the strip club's rear entrance as he caught the pounding bass of electronic music emanating from deep inside.

Now it was time for the ultimate high.

He clenched the knife tightly and barreled into the door shoulder-first, knocking it open. One mobster, his back to the door, cast a bewildered gaze over his shoulder before taking a stab to the spine. The wolf wrenched the knife from his victim and hurled it blade-first into the left eye of a second gangster at the end of the hallway, dropping him instantly.

He thrust open the nearest door to his right to find a changing room, surprisingly vacant. He snatched up a baseball bat leaning in the corner as a bloodcurdling scream erupted from the hallway.

It was a young woman.

A door slammed open in the corridor as there came two more voices, those of gangsters.

"What the fuck happened here?!" One exclaimed.

"Over there," said the other, "that door!"

The wolf brandished his bat as white dress shoes clacked along the tile.

He thrust it around the corner, smashing in one man's face and causing the other to bring his handgun to the ready.

The woman's screaming escalated into a piercing shriek.

The patriot and his adversary were a few feet too far apart and, making a split-second decision bordering on lunacy, the latter threw his baseball bat and struck his opponent square in the face, knocking him unconscious. He retrieved the bloodied weapon from the floor and confirmed his kill with three swift strikes to the skull.

The wolf stood to his feet, catching his breath, and noticed that the screaming had stopped. He glanced rightward to see a prostitute, scantily clad, shocked speechless and pale as the bodyguards' attire, stumble backwards into the open doorway behind her and faint. He looked back down at what was little was left intact of the mobster's head, picked up his fallen pistol and inspected it, unsure on quite how to use it. He made his way to the door into the club proper, deciding to hold it out like he saw on television: sideways, knuckles-up. He stepped over the comatose woman and turned a corner into a hall of what he assumed were private bedrooms as his adrenaline-induced high began fading like a dying light bulb.

Thankfully, another gangster managed to rejuvenate it.

He came from one of the several numbered doors—out of seven, the predator counted—and upon seeing the masked man let out a cry of alarm before taking a bullet to the torso and collapsing.

The wolf gripped his wrist in pain at the startling amount of recoil his gun had.

"_Fuck_ me," he growled.

As five more doors flew open, he ignored the pain and took aim.

A woman screamed from the only closed room as his gut clenched.

He had no cover.

Things were about to get interesting.

As soon as he saw a white uniform, he unloaded his weapon into the corridor. In only a few quick seconds, the slide locked and he tossed the empty pistol aside. One bad guy down.

Two.

Three?

A shotgun cocked.

"Die, bitch!"

The wolf dashed forward, snatching up a golf club at he went. He turned into a doorway and struck the armed mobster across the side of the head with an audible crack. Detecting a sort of battle cry, he ducked as a baseball bat flew over the top of his head from behind, close enough to touch his mask's hollow rubber ears. He turned and swung his weapon, only for the gangster to catch it and wrench it from his hands before preparing for another swing of his own. Reflexively, the wolf punched him in the stomach and sent him reeling empty-handed into the hall, breathless.

The criminal and the predator stared each other down as the former fitted himself with a pair of brass knuckles. A sneer crept across his square jaw and his bald head shimmered with sweat.

"American bastard," he snarled before swiping his fist at his opponent's face.

The patriot dodged and flailed his arm in an attempt to connect it with something, anything. A fist like steel slammed into his chest, surely breaking a rib or two. He threw another punch, contacting nothing but the cold, dry air. A second set of knuckles pounded into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Breathless and panicked, he ripped the mask from his head and looked his opponent in the face as the man drew a revolver from the floor.

Samuel's heart kicked into overdrive as he tackled the Russian to the leopard print carpet and began pounding both fists into his face and jaw. The flesh of the man's cheeks swelled and bled as he continued his assault. He only stopped when he could feel his bloodied hands contact raw flesh and bone, and stared down into a pair of deadened eyes.

_"Holy shit!"_

He whipped his head towards the other end of the hall at the dark-suited figure staring at him in terror: the VIP. He must have escaped from his room during the brawl.

The guest bolted for the exit as Samuel put on his mask and slipped the dead mobster's revolver into his back pocket. For good measure, he stooped down and readied a submachine gun before chasing after the man.

He sprinted down the hall and ducked through the doorway in hot pursuit, following the bloody shoe prints trailing along the carpet and tile. The pounding synth music from deep within the building became louder the further he ran, and the bass practically shook the ground. The bright, sickly blue of the back rooms' fluorescent lights gave way to neon pink against black decor. He whipped a curtain out of the way to find himself on a runway and halted in his tracks. Surrounding the stage lounged a crowd of gangsters and hookers, the former of whom drew firearms at the sight of the armed, blood-spattered intruder in a rubber animal mask. The women cried out in terror and ducked their heads, barely audible over the deafening beat of the club music.

After what felt like seconds of trepidation, the wolf raised his weapon and leapt from the stage, opening fire into the hostile congregation.

Wine glasses exploded, blood spurted, and bodies dropped to the hypnotizing beat of the music. The bass shook the floor, almost in sync with the rifle fire. Blood, alcohol and tobacco smoke flooded the intruder's nostrils as he tossed the emptied gun aside and drew his revolver. He kicked in the double doors leading into the lobby and sank a few bullets into the guards waiting for him.

There only remained the VIP, futilely pulling at the club's front doors. When he saw the wolf, he pressed his back up against the locked handles.

"F—fuck!" He gasped, pounding on the door in an asinine gesture. "Y—you speak Russian?"

Without hesitation, the predator put a bullet between his eyes.

• • •

A cheery tune drifted through the cold, nearly vacant bar from a jukebox as Samuel strolled inside, hands resting leisurely in his pockets. His eyes scanned the room from behind his reflective shades, searching for Adrian. Finally, he found him sitting across the way with his nose in a newspaper.

"Hey, man," he greeted warmly as he approached from behind. Adrian remained silent. Samuel cautiously sat down in the booth chair across from him. "You okay, Adrian?"

Adrian peeked over his paper with dull brown eyes.

"Hey, Sam," he sighed.

He put his paper down to reveal a gaunt, pale face. His auburn hair was messy and his soul patch seemed to rest uncomfortably on his chin.

"Whoa, you look like sh—" Samuel stopped himself and reworded his thoughts. "Uh, you don't look too hot."

"Glad to see you've shown up," Adrian sighed with a weak, short-lived smile, tossing the paper onto the table. "I've been waiting for over an hour."

The policeman took a swallow of his icy drink and blew out an exasperated breath.

"Sorry, man. Is that vodka?"

"What? Hell no. I have work tomorrow; do you really think I'd let myself near any alcohol after a day like this? It's just water."

This bar being their natural hangout, Samuel never expected his friend to come and _not_ share at least a beer or two.

"A day like what?" Samuel asked slowly, taking care with his words.

"Lindsay left this morning," his friend muttered. "Just took her things, walked out and left me a little note. Said I 'wasn't around anymore'—go figure." He took another sip of water and picked his paper back up. Samuel caught a glimpse of a news story on the side facing him:

_"Another massacre has been reported on northwest 184th street. A man wearing an animal mask was said to have been leaving the scene."_

"Looks like we're making headlines," Samuel said with a grin in an attempt to lighten the mood with a more exciting topic.

Raising a curious eyebrow, Adrian turned the page over and scoured it with tired eyes. His mouth twisted into a scowl.

"That's not us," he grumbled, returning to his own reading. "Just some other poor bastard with a gun to his head."

"What?" It was Samuel's turn to cock an eyebrow.

Adrian let out a sigh of resignation and put his face in his hands. There came a bout of uncomfortable silence as the jukebox by the door switched off.

"You know that organization I signed up for a while back?"

"Yeah, some program for diehard Americans or something, right? What about it?"

He could see moisture build up in Adrian's eyes.

"They left a death threat on my answering machine yesterday. Implied they'd kill me if I didn't... do what I was told."

Samuel could feel his enthusiasm drain, taking with it the willingness to speak.

"D—death threats?" he managed. "Really, from a group like that?"

Adrian buried his face in his hands once again.

"That's what my department said, too," he continued with a hollow voice, removing his hands and letting his gaze fall to his feet. "Call me crazy, but I think Fifty Blessings are the ones who have been leaving those messages for me—I practically started getting them as soon as I signed up. I know that they're patriots like me, but I didn't think they would be so literal about 'fighting the Russian menace.'"

"Well, what were you expecting?" Immediately Samuel grimaced, wishing that he could take the absentminded question back.

Adrian shot his friend a glare and brought his tone down to a hiss.

"I wasn't expecting to be blowing their fucking heads off! Jesus Christ, Sam, do you really need to ask me that?" He checked his watch and hurriedly collected his newspaper, balling his free hand into a tight fist. "I've got to go, it's after midnight already."

He stormed from the booth, and Samuel followed as he tried to rejuvenate the conversation.

"Come on, man," he said as they reached Adrian's Mustang, "what's the big deal? They're criminals, they don't deserve to be tainting our country. Like you said, they're all Bolshevik scum, what should they mean to us? Communist sons-a—"

_"They are_ human beings,_ Sam!"_

Adrian was left huffing after letting out such a cry, and his face was beet red against his blue denim jacket.

"I'm going home," he growled, stepping into the driver's seat of his car.

He slammed the door shut and sped off into the hazy night without even buckling up.

Samuel stood on the street corner, struck silent at his own callousness. He sulked back to his motorcycle, removed his shades and stared up into the starless sky.

* * *

_I hope you're all enjoying the story so far! I would greatly appreciate some feedback._


	3. Submission

**10:38 PM**

**April 21st, 1989**

**Miami, Florida**

_What am I going to do about rent?_

The question had sprung into Adrian's mind like a resilient weed as he drove a petty thief to the police station earlier that week. Ever since, it was left spinning around in his brain and continued to do so more fiercely than ever as he unlocked the door to his penthouse apartment and crept inside.

He left himself a mental note to never allow a woman to break up with him if she was paying more than half the money needed to live in such an admittedly luxurious place.

_I've got another month here, tops._

Adrian stepped into his living room and laid his denim jacket on the back of a dining chair nearby before wrenching his keyring from his pocket and tossing it onto the kitchen island.

It felt so odd to not have a chipper voice asking him how his day was anymore.

He sighed and slumped his elbows onto the kitchenette's counter. His crestfallen gaze drifted from the half-empty bottles of fine liquor and across the countertop to the phone.

His stomach dropped when he noticed the small red light blinking innocently on the answering machine.

_Shit._

He considered ignoring it and fleeing to his bedroom, but ultimately decided to take the message—it wasn't going to go away if he didn't pay attention to it, no matter how much he prayed that it would. With a nervous scratch of the bandage on his nose, he put the handset to his ear and played back the answering machine, hoping beyond hope for it to be a legitimate call.

_"You've got one new message! Today, 11:04 AM."_

_"Good day, this is 'William' from work. You've got one last parcel due for delivery tonight, very special. Have it delivered to the corner of 116 West End and Buchanan Avenue, top floor. No more delays, understand? Or you're fired."_

Adrian slammed the receiver down and put a hand to his forehead. The call he dreaded had finally come.

_What am I going to do?_ He asked himself, attempting to ignore the answer that came so easily to mind. He glared back over at the keys on the white marble countertop as he begrudgingly faced what he had to do.

He snatched up his keys and jacket, took a long drink from a champagne bottle and stormed out the door towards the elevator.

_Rent will have to wait._

The walk from the back of the complex lobby to the parking lot was an arduous one, and the drive out of Brickell was equally unpleasant. The cool evening breeze did nothing to assuage the tenseness and dread stirring up in Adrian's chest as he turned off the freeway and coasted under the overpass to his destination.

With his fists clenched, he stepped out of the sports car.

He looked up at the worn chain-link gate before him with a frown as he fiddled with his keyring. There was little in the way of light, save a lamp on the building across the fence with moths congregating around its pale yellow glow like rowdy adolescents at a rave. What he would give to be here during normal working hours; he was so comfortable being here on a heat-stricken Saturday afternoon and not contemplating murder. At last, he found the correct key in the moonlight and opened up the padlock.

Leaving his car outside the gate, Adrian crept into the small lot, eyes fixated on the worn American flag hanging resolutely above the door of the mechanic's workshop.

He had little trouble finding the key to the metal door under the lamplight. Slowly and meticulously, as if not to awaken someone unseen, he sneaked inside and flicked on the light switch. With a low buzz, the dusty room became illuminated under the sickly blue-green glow of fluorescent lights. A car jack lay empty to Adrian's left, tarnished from the many vehicles it had lifted, and next to it were positioned several low steel tables littered with various tools and an unplugged radio.

Adrian's footsteps were all that could be heard beneath the quiet drone of the lights. He made his way over to a long wooden table and drummed his fingers against it anxiously, gazing up at the well-marked map of Miami pinned to the corkboard on the wall. As his eyes darted around in search of the intersection of 116 West End and Buchanan Avenue, he discovered a sticky note. On it was written:

_Adrian, I've moved your stuff under the metal table by the tool cabinet to make room. Hope you don't mind. —Samuel._

Adrian leaned beneath the table and, sure enough, an open cooler was there, full of lukewarm water and an abandoned bottle of cheap beer.

He made his way across the room to the side of the metal tables opposite the car jack, and at last he found the stainless steel safe waiting for him. With shaky hands, he put in the eight-digit combination and pulled open the metal door. He cast a fretful eye to a black duffel bag amongst bundles of money and sentimental items and, with a huff, lifted it onto his shoulder.

_How heavy is this damn thing?_

The policeman heaved his equipment onto the table, glancing at the door to make sure it was properly closed. He returned his gaze to the ominous silver zipper at his fingertips, and with a shaky hand he opened it up.

His eyes darted across pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, holsters and various cases of ammunition within. Methodically, he reached for an empty Beretta magazine and a box of bullets and began loading up as he allowed his gaze to travel to the two masks buried underneath the mess of dark metal and plastic.

The distorted, eyeless visages of the otter and the bald eagle stared up at him as he retrieved a second magazine and continued to prepare for violence.

It was time he served his beloved country—whether he wanted to or not.

• • •

Adrian checked his watch once again as he lounged in the driver's seat of his 1976 Mustang.

_Time flies when you're contemplating murder, _he mused grimly. Had it only been twenty minutes since he arrived? It felt like he could sit here forever if he didn't have a job to do, or if his ass wasn't on the line should he not go through with it. His eyes flicked up at the hotel across the parking lot and he sighed, bringing his disguise to bear. Waiting around was not going to make this any easier on his conscience, he decided.

Feeling the back of his neck heat up with anxiety, Adrian put on his disguise for the night: the otter mask. Something about the way it showed off its teeth reminded him of an inane grin, and it felt good to use something other than the bald eagle mask every once in a while.

He fitted two suppressed Beretta handguns into the pair of holsters at his hips and crept away from his car, thankful for the cover of darkness so prevalent in this mostly barren lot. The ballistic vest he had on beneath his jacket wore on his shoulders.

As he approached the front doors of the hotel lobby, something on the ground caught his eye. Some kind of insignia was marked sloppily on the sidewalk in bright red paint, depicting a circle with three horizontal lines drawn through it. It was vaguely familiar and alarming; though he could scarcely remember it on his previous assignments, Adrian recognized it as a sort of logo or calling card for Fifty Blessings—and it was fresh, by the looks of it.

He turned the safety off on his weapons and walked through the hotel's doors.

He had not taken two steps before a pistol was trained on him, and he reflexively drew one of his guns and fired. With a muffled crack, the Russian gangster behind the reception desk opposite the door slumped over with a clean hole blown into his forehead.

A mobster across the sizable lobby to the right brandished a butterfly knife and vaulted over a lounge chair in an attempt to attack before taking a bullet to the jugular and collapsing onto a zebra skin rug. The man groped at his exposed throat as his suit turned a nauseating shade of red.

Hesitantly, the otter drew his second pistol. He fired both barrels into a trio of armed men coming down from around a corner nearby before any of them could get a single shot off, the hail of bullets tearing through them.

_Bolshevik scum, just like Sam said._

He kept his friend's attitude towards his duty as a "real" American out of his mind.

He dashed around the corner and sank three rounds into two mobsters in another small lounge area who were ready to strike him with their baseball bats.

He glanced ahead into yet another lounge area, this one considerably bigger and sporting an open doorway. A gangster strolled out into the lobby with a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, taking a moment to react to the otter's presence by drawing a Skorpion submachine gun. Within seconds, he was full of holes. The otter dashed to the room as the men within cried out in surprise and panic. Pistols at the ready, he sprinted inside and opened fire into a crowd of armed and visibly nervous gangsters.

Before he knew it, he had fired off his last remaining bullet into the mess of blond hair that was the back of an injured mobster's head, spattering blood on his own jacket and mask.

Deciding to not check the floor for any stragglers, he holstered his empty weapons and picked up the Skorpion from the floor before stepping into a nearby elevator.

Too quickly for his adrenaline-addled brain to process, Adrian pressed the button for the top floor and leaned up against the wall, removing his mask and taking several deep breaths of the cold, dry air. He looked down at his blood-caked hands and noticed they were trembling uncontrollably.

"Oh my God," he gasped, resolving to return to the ground floor and depart as soon as possible.

He held his mask close to his chest as he let his head hang low in contemplation of what he had just done.

With a chime, the elevator doors opened.

Adrian's survival instincts overshadowed any remorse when a gangster shoved the double barrels of a hunting shotgun in his face. The police officer kicked the mobster in the groin to disarm him and blasted the top of his skull open with a short burst from his own firearm.

Another well-suited man exclaimed a few Russian words from across the room as he raised an M16.

Swiftly, Adrian gunned him down along with his three armed companions. He let his empty submachine gun clatter to the tile and picked up the double-barrel shotgun in one hand. With another deep breath, he put on his disguise and charged forward. No turning back.

The narrow corridor opened up into a wider area, adorned with fancy leather furniture and a large magenta carpet in the middle of the room—or at least it used to be magenta before the blood of four men soaked it dark red. From here extended another hallway leading to what were presumably the penthouse suites, bringing thoughts of Adrian's own.

_Damn it, I should really be in bed right now._

Deciding to start his sweep of the floor with the rightmost suite, he raised his shotgun up to the lock and focused on listening past the ringing in his ears.

He could hear a distant conversation going on through the door, confused and loud.

Hesitantly, he pulled the trigger.

The flimsy wooden door exploded into splinters and gun smoke and the otter kicked what remained of it from the frame. He caught a gunman in his sights and fired the remaining buckshot shell through his chest. He grabbed the hot barrel of his gun in one hand and used it to block the end of a golf club thrust down at his head. As the hammer and firing mechanism of the weapon shattered from the blow, he tossed the useless thing aside and dove for the dead mobster's handgun. He snatched up the Makarov on the hardwood floor, turned, and fired into his attackers.

For an indeterminate amount of time, Adrian laid on the floor and stared up into the hypnotically spinning ceiling fan above him. An unsavory combination of blood, sweat and tobacco smoke wafted through the brightly lit room as a kind of delirium began taking hold. For a moment, he doubted he was even breathing anymore.

A sharp, hot pain from his arm brought him back to reality. He got himself up with his good arm and looked down at the large gash in his denim jacket and the slashed, bleeding flesh underneath. It did not look too severe; he could get it patched up after his work was done.

His stomach dropped at the prospect of more killing as he looked around the room.

At his feet lay three gangsters, all dead. One stared on at the far window with glassy eyes, throat torn and exposed by a gunshot—and the police officer found it incredibly difficult to tear his gaze away. A fourth lay on a red throw rug, leaning up against the sliding glass door to a balcony with two bleeding holes in his torso. Across the room sat two more Russians on a messy couch. One was face-down on the blood-spattered glass tabletop in front of him and the other lay slumped back with a profusely bloody nose—perhaps from the lines of cocaine he had been snorting or the bullet hole blasted into his skull.

Adrian looked down at the pistol in his hand and checked its magazine. It was completely empty.

His legs seemed hollow as he staggered to the door and took up a butterfly knife in a shaky hand.

Two rooms to go.

He stumbled out into the connecting room and approached the door across from him. He stroked his hand down the smooth, polished wood and he steeled himself the best he could. With a bruised fist, he knocked and awaited an answer. Almost immediately, the door opened.

"Who is it?" The gangster at the door mumbled, clearly under the influence of a joint rolled up between his fingers.

The otter swiftly grabbed him by the collar and shanked him a few times below the sternum, bringing him to the floor as he bled out.

"_Govno!_" One mobster cried out from the middle of the room as he fumbled for a pistol in his belt. A second and a third behind him drew their own weapons before their uninvited guest took action. In a fit of hysteria, he dashed up to the three and flailed at anything within arm's reach. He slashed, stabbed and sliced the trio apart within seconds. Almost unconsciously, the otter dashed left and into a small bedroom where he stabbed one mobster in the back of the neck and bashed a second's head in with a golf club. Yet another gangster emerged from a bathroom nearby before his brains and fragments of skull were splattered across the mirror and sink with a single, furious strike.

Once he knew the room was lifeless, the patriot grabbed a Kalashnikov on a dresser and dashed back out into the hall.

One more room to go and he would be free again.

He sprayed his firearm into the wooden door as he approached it, ripping apart the door and the guard behind it with a hail of gunfire. Two voices cried out in surprise from within the room, one frantic and the other confused, small and tinny.

"Holy shit!"

_"What the hell is going on in there?!"_

"Mister Komarov, we've got an intruder!"

The otter stepped through the obliterated door frame and over the guard's corpse as he brought his gun to bear. This suite was vacant in comparison to the other two; the only person present was some kind of businessman, an African-American looking to be in his early 30's, with his hands held shaking above his head. At the desk he sat behind was a phone and a mess of important-looking papers.

"The fuck do you want, man?" The man said in the only thing someone so terrified could muster and call a growl.

_"Who is it?"_ Komarov demanded from the speakerphone on the desk.

Adrian loosened the iron grip on his weapon. Should he escape now? Surely leaving a witness at the scene of the crime would not be appreciated by Fifty Blessings, especially one collaborating with the Russian mafia, but this poor bastard was an American who was clearly fearing for his life—though he seemed bold enough about it.

"It's one of those masked motherfuckers!" He half-snarled into the speakerphone.

Adrian's indecision was put to rest when the businessman retrieved a Tokarev pistol from under his desk and fired into his protective vest. Reflexively, Adrian pulled the trigger on his own weapon and blasted open the man's head, splattering blood and brain matter onto the window behind him in a grotesque display.

_"Warren?"_ Gasped Komarov from the other line. _"Shit!"_

Immediately, the connection was severed and all was quiet.

Adrian found himself in a kind of nightmarish trance as he dropped his rifle to the floor and turned his gaze away from the mess of gore that was once the top of Warren's head. The scents of rubber and blood were overpowering as he stood shuddering in the cold, brightly lit elevator and descended.

_They'll clean this all up for me,_ he thought with a sudden bout of lightheadedness, _I've got nothing to worry about._ He removed his jacket and wadded it up in his hands as he stumbled through the lobby on gelatinous legs.

There came a wave of nausea as Adrian ripped his mask from his head and stepped out into the night. He could not tell if he was hearing a police siren or tinnitus in the distance. As he reached his car door, he threw the wad of rubber and denim to the asphalt, leaned on the vehicle's roof and vomited.

* * *

_I've added a garage in here (as of 2/5/16). Keep the reviews coming, folks! I really appreciate them! :)_


	4. Bloodbath

**11:59 PM**

**November 13th, 1991**

**Moscow, Russia**

A frigid gust of air blew in through the gaps in the boarded-up window, clearing the scents of tobacco and mildew from the poorly lit bedroom.

Every once in a while, Victor Brody wished for a heating system that actually worked. He glanced up at the air vent above his head with disinterest and sighed. He wouldn't be surprised if the damned thing was iced over by now.

He returned his attention to the Mossberg 500 in his hands and continued to inspect it under the lamplight. The stock and pump looked a little worn as far as wood went, and their various little scratches and marks were telltale signs of the action the weapon had seen.

_Just needs a polish and it's good as new,_ he thought with a thin smile.

A loud knocking from the apartment door reached his ears above the droning howl of the wind outside, and at once Brody was thrust from his musing. The mercenary combed a hand through his shaggy blond hair and stood up from his desk. Damn, were his legs stiff.

With a tug of his goatee, he walked out of the damp, cold bedroom and through the equally untidy kitchen area up to the apartment door. He peered into the peephole to see a wide hazel eye staring back at him.

"Victor!" Greeted the man cheerily through the door, "May I come in?"

"Yuri!" Brody beamed as he threw open the ancient wooden door and allowed his friend entry. "It's good to see you. Where the hell have you been?"

Yuri Khanilov continued to sport his inane grin from behind his scraggly auburn beard. Absentmindedly, Brody focused his gaze on the Manila envelope tucked under the man's arm as he shut the door behind him. Yuri led the way into the bedroom and Brody fell into step.

"I have been contacted by that new client, Tsaryov." Yuri held up the envelope in one calloused hand and smirked. "He is going to be paying us pretty nicely, my friend."

Brody grinned at the word "us."

"How much?" He asked.

"Two hundred thousand roubles for a 'competitor' of his."

Brody let out an impressed whistle as Yuri sat down on the messy bedspread and searched the inside of the folder with his fingers.

"Damn, only for one man?" Brody asked skeptically. In reply, Yuri pulled out a pair of Polaroid images and handed them over with a concerned frown. "What's this?"

Brody found himself staring at what had to be the most luxurious-looking nightclub this side of Moscow. Through the grainy image, he could make out two guards—armed with rifles and clad in sleek red suits, of course—standing on either side of the entrance of the two-story establishment. The second picture was not quite as interesting: a middle-aged man in a suit standing out on a balcony of a very different building. His black hair stood out in the grainy image, as did the large scar along the bridge of his nose.

"I received those photos from him today," Yuri said. "One's a nightclub in town—Uglisky Prospect is where it is. The other is the guy we're going to take out, some Slavic gangster from America named Alek Malyshev. Our friend Tsaryov informed us that the club is his usual—should I say—safe house. I doubt anyone will be able to track us down if we're out quick enough."

Too bad discretion had to come at the price of luxury, Brody thought bitterly.

"Reminds me of old times," he said half to himself as he handed the photo back.

Yuri gave him a confused look.

"Those must have been some pretty wild times, comrade," he said, "this place is crawling with security guards, I would imagine." He looked over his shoulder at the shotgun resting on the desk nearby and smiled at its new condition. "I may have a chance to put my baby to good use. Looks like you did a good job fixing her up."

With a swiftness that belied his age, Yuri made his over to the desk and gripped the weapon while the younger Brody clapped his hands together and turned to the door.

"Shall we get moving?" He asked with a smirk as a grin made its way onto Yuri's face.

"I can only have two American assholes in my life for so long. Let us make our pay!" His fellow mercenary roared triumphantly as he slung the shotgun over his back and grabbed two boxes of buckshot shells from the tabletop. "We are animals, Victor!"

Yuri added an exaggerated baring of teeth, flexing his arms for effect. Brody gave his partner an amiable slap on the shoulder as he led him to the door.

On his way out, Brody did his best to ignore the thugs and hoodlums guarding the three floors of apartments—or, as Yuri preferred to call them, "tenants." Every methamphetamine-fueled inquiry about where he was going the mercenary deflected.

"Out to cap another rich fuck, yes?" Asked a dark-eyed gopnik—one with enough metal in his face to make a rifle magazine's worth of ammunition—as he descended the stairs alongside the duo. "Best of luck, comrade. We could sure use some more booze with what you'll earn."

Brody gave him little more than a cursory acknowledgement as he and Yuri approached the two armed guards at the front door of the apartment complex. Stoically, the leftmost guard twirled the tarnished butterfly knife in his hand, took a puff of his cigarette and nodded his approval. With Yuri leading the way, the mercenaries stepped out into the freezing cold and slammed the doors shut behind them, ready to take on the Moscow underground.

• • •

The snow was only a few inches deep by the time the jalopy rolled to a stop one block away from the night club, which stood out in the dark winter night like a lavish star. Yuri removed the keys from the ignition and drew his shotgun from the back seat.

"You brought your weapon, comrade?" He asked Brody as he put on a balaclava.

His partner retrieved a karambit from the back of his belt and elicited a hearty laugh.

"Take my pistol," Yuri said, reaching into his holster, pulling out a tarnished PB handgun and handing it over grip-first, suppressor and all. When his partner hesitated, Yuri simply set it down on his lap.

"If you insist," Brody sighed, tucking the gun away in his own belt. "You would be surprised what I can do without a gun."

Yuri raised an incredulous eyebrow and glanced out the frosty windshield at their target.

"_You_ would be surprised by the potential number of riflemen in that building. No telling how many bodyguards there are." With a quick pump of his shotgun, Yuri stepped out of the car as Brody followed suit and pulled his own balaclava down from the top of his head. It did little to ward off the biting winter air. "You could also learn a thing or two about Russian hospitality," Yuri added flatly.

Brody ignored the comment and steeled himself as he approached the front entrance, signaling with his hand for Yuri to stay put. He kept his stance a calm one and hid his pistol behind his back as he came closer to the two guards posted on either side of the door.

"Hey, asshole," the rightmost one growled, bringing his Kalashnikov to bear, "you have a—?"

Brody whipped out Yuri's gun, shot a round through the guard's eye and followed it with a shot to the other guard's chest. He motioned his comrade over and inspected his grim handiwork: the first guard was as lively as to be expected, but the second had himself propped up against the wall and gripping his bleeding chest beneath the sickly blue neon lights.

Brody didn't think to pull out his knife or waste another bullet. He raised the heel of his boot and kicked with all his might, smashing open the bodyguard's skull against the concrete wall. He could hear Yuri groan uncomfortably at the sight as he approached.

"Come on," Brody said as pointed his pistol at the door, "let's get this asshole."

With ease, Brody forced the entrance open with a stroke of his gore-soaked boot and, with the swift ferocity of wolves, the mercenaries got to work.

Three guards standing in the middle of the lobby failed to react to their unwelcome guests in time—Brody eliminated them with three head shots. A fourth was grotesquely opened up across the teal carpeting by a well-placed shotgun blast, and a fifth came within striking distance with his butterfly knife before a karambit blade slashed open his jugular.

Brody allowed the familiar scent of blood to come to him as he tightened his grip on Yuri's pistol and thrust open another door to reveal a lounge area above an open dance floor. Garish blue and purple neon lights flashed and strobed from seemingly everywhere to the beat of the club music, permeating the tobacco smoke that swirled around the room like bolts of lightning in a thunderstorm and reducing any potential threats to hazy silhouettes.

A furious yell came from across the open floor and Brody kicked over the nearest table to him, sending shot glasses and an ash tray to the floor with a crash. He barely had the time to duck behind his makeshift cover before a deafening salvo of assault rifle fire tore apart the opposite wall.

After the gunfire ceased, Brody could hear an empty rifle magazine drop and he took his chance. With his knife in one hand and Yuri's pistol in the other, he darted around the railed-off middle of the room and shoved his curved blade below the sternum of the nearest bodyguard and shot another through the side of the head. A third he grasped by the hair and slammed face-first into the metal railing with a muffled crack, and he fired two shots into a fourth guard's torso before kicking him over the rail to the dance floor twelve feet below.

A fifth guard, who was heavyset to say the least, thrust open a door from behind. Brody whipped around, pistol in hand, and pulled the trigger—only for the slide to lock with a dissatisfying _click_. He dropped the empty weapon to the floor as the Russian drew back his fist, spiked knuckle dusters shining beneath the cold blue club lights. Brody narrowly dodged the swing and reached for the karambit in his belt; things were about to get fun.

Panic emerged through the surging adrenaline as he groped at nothing. Frantically, he looked around the floor for it and found its curved hilt sticking up from the chest of a nearby corpse several feet away.

Not that it would do him much good anyway; the man before him had the physique of a tank, and could surely smash his skull open with a single punch.

The mercenary found himself backed up against the railing as he stared up into the bald, loathsome face of his adversary, who had his fist drawn back in preparation for the fatal blow.

A sharp whistle broke the stillness.

The sound of thunder erupted from Brody's right as the guard's head exploded into a crimson mess of brain matter and fragments of bone. With a dull thud that nearly shook the floor, the headless body slumped backwards to the blood-soaked tile as Brody stood motionless, unable to process what had just happened.

A gloved hand waving in front of his face grounded him in reality. Yuri's beady eyes glimmered disappointedly as he handed a Kalashnikov rifle to his partner. Brody gripped the weapon as firmly as he could to maintain some semblance of dignity, but the other mercenary's expression failed to change.

"'What you can do without a gun' my ass," the Russian muttered. "Follow me to the stairs, comrade, I've already cleared this floor out."

Confident in the darkness of the club lounge, Brody removed his mask and wiped the sweat from his brow with a limp hand before stepping over the freshly dead bear of a man to retrieve his knife. With a good tug, the bloodied blade slid from its victim easily.

"W—wait," he stammered to Yuri, "I couldn't reach my knife. Did you see that fat bastard's knuckles?"

Yuri ignored him and walked to the door from which the "fat bastard" had come. With a defeated sigh, Brody followed him through the door and focused on the task at hand.

The two made their way through a narrow corridor that was filled to the brim with their usual handiwork. Countless bullet holes filled the walls, the white plaster was spattered and smeared with blood, and the mercenaries stepped over body after body; some were blown apart by buckshot, others slashed open shoulder to groin, and still others had their necks broken and skulls smashed by a rusty pipe still in Yuri's hand, dripping with blood.

"You take the second floor," Yuri instructed as he thrust open a door into a brightly lit stairwell, "and I will clear the basement." He snatched a pistol up from the hand of a dead bodyguard and slipped it into his belt. "Break is over."

Without another word, he bolted down the stairs, leaving Brody to recompose himself.

With a deep breath of the cool, stale air, the mercenary stomped his boots up the concrete stairs as he anxiously twirled the ring of the karambit's hilt on his index finger. He stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at the aged wooden door before him.

_No fucking up this time,_ he told himself. He put on his balaclava, clenched his fists around his knife and slung his firearm over his shoulder. _I'm an animal, damn it!_

He gritted his teeth and brought his leg back. It was time to show Yuri what he could really do.

The door yielded easily against his boot and knocked into a guard standing on the other side. The Russian stumbled and gripped the back of his head in pain before Brody drove the blade of his weapon through his throat and tore it open with a flick of the wrist. Another guard standing across the small room beside a plastic plant could only stare with a pair of sunken eyes, reddened by the joint of marijuana in his fingers. Without even considering the man's holstered pistol much of a threat, Brody gripped him by the collar and thrust the point of his knife through his temple to watch his eyes roll up and his legs buckle.

"What the _fuck!_"

Brody released his kill and tore the shocked newcomer apart with rifle fire. The door behind where he once stood remained ajar, revealing the several armed guards at the ready within, and the mercenary acted accordingly.

Brody's aim was greatly improved by the brighter change of scenery as he blew them all away with a hail of bullets.

As if to complement the scene, similar gunfire broke out two floors below. Brody found himself smirking as he opened another door to a hallway leading to what looked like a private office.

_Take your time, my friend, because I sure won't._

He could sense nothing but the reek of his bloody jacket as he stormed up to the door at the end of the corridor, rifle in hand. Furiously, he shot the lock from the handle and kicked the door in.

There he was, dressed in an impeccable red suit and snorting a line of top-notch cocaine: Malyshev. He glanced up just as Brody pulled the trigger, blasting the man's brains out all over the rug behind him.

Another contract put to rest. Brody tossed his rifle aside and removed his balaclava to wipe the sweat from his eyes.

Blinding pain flared up in the mercenary's leg as a gunshot rang out from the hallway behind him, and he buckled his legs with an agonized scream. He could barely see past the tears welling up in eyes as he looked down at the gaping, bleeding wound below his kneecap.

In a haze of pain, he stared back up at the blurry man he was sent to kill to see his unseen guard emerge from the hallway and pull something down over his boss' head. Slowly, the pain began to subside as lightheadedness overcame him.

He was completely numb by the time the lights above him each went out with a pop.

For the longest time, there was nothing—no pain, no sound, nothing but the dim light of the moon outside.

Then, a new voice broke the silence from behind Malyshev's desk.

Vaguely familiar.

American.

And absolutely arresting.

"You shouldn't look so surprised."

Brody could hardly find the will to speak as he gazed up at the dark ceiling.

"Am I—am I dying?" He asked in what was little more than a whisper.

There was silence for the longest time.

"In a way, you are," the voice said.

Brody sat up, groaning at the dull pain that shot through him as he did so.

"Malyshev?"

"No."

Slowly, a dim blue light made its way through the doorway to illuminate the stranger, and Brody's throat dried up at the sight.

The man stood behind the desk with his arms folded across the gaping hole in his torso, doing little to cover his perforated lungs and motionless heart beneath Malyshev's suit. The only thing that truly seemed alive was the rooster mask he wore—it blinked as it stared down at Brody, and its beak even moved as it spoke again.

"If there's one thing you prove Americans can outdo the Russians at, it's excel at violent brutality." Brody could only gaze into the dark recesses that were the rooster's eye holes. There was no life in them, only blackness. "What drives you to break into a night club and massacre your fellow man?"

The mercenary weakly reached for a knife that wasn't there. A trickle of blood began to dribble down from beneath the rooster mask.

"For the money," he answered at last.

"For the money, huh?" The rooster asked with a cock of the head. "Are you sure about that?" Brody could not bring himself to speak. "You can't deny who you really are for much longer." Casually, the rooster walked around the desk and kneeled down in front of Brody. The man grimaced at the stench of death that followed him. "Maybe Yuri is right." The corners of its beak twisted into a chilling scowl. "Maybe you're nothing more than an animal."

Brody's lightheadedness took its toll as he fell onto his back and watched the blue light fade, leaving him in darkness once again.

• • •

Gradually, the pain returned to Brody as he opened his eyes. Above him strobed the sickly yellow lights of passing street lamps, the howling of the wind and the sputtering of an ancient car engine. With much effort, he sat up from where he laid in the back of Yuri's jalopy with a pained gasp, and his partner looked back from the driver's seat with a sigh of relief.

"You are one lucky bastard, Victor," he said with shades of somberness. "That could have been your heart instead of your leg. Thank God I reached you before any more damage was done."

Brody attempted to squint the stars from his vision as he inspected his wound. It was crudely wrapped in scraps of dark cloth, and it reeked of blood and vodka.

"Plus," Yuri added with a thin smile as he brought the vehicle to a stop, "think of the money we'll be getting for your work. You did an excellent job, my friend."

While Yuri might have been visualizing bundles of money or a fancy new weapon, all Brody could see was Malyshev—scowling rooster mask and all.


	5. Overtime

_I'm so sorry this one took so long, folks! This is what happens when I'm juggling two writing projects, university and a mod project all at the same time._

* * *

**11:31 PM**

**May 10th, 1989**

**Miami, Florida**

The twinkling lights of Miami Beach shimmered across the bay like so many golden stars. The waterfront extended far out from the edge of the parking lot, the off-white sand littered with beer bottles, soda cans and the various other refuse discarded by countless university students let out for the summer.

The beach probably looked a lot nicer in a resort city like the one Adrian was staring out at. He smirked sardonically and leaned up from where he reclined on the worn metal bench.

Litter aside, he found this spot as enjoyable as any to relax at. He had no fiancée to impress anymore, no partnering officer to rush back with to the station at this time of night; nothing but his thoughts, the salty breeze, the hum of the city traffic and the quiet chattering of the police scanner in the cruiser parked behind him. There was nobody to ask him questions, nobody to pry.

Adrian looked down at his wristwatch dismissively. If he left now, he might be able to return his vehicle and uniform at the station and make it home before midnight. Hell, maybe he could pay Samuel a visit on the way. As far as he could tell, the young man survived more on coffee than sleep.

As he stood up and stretched his back, Adrian gazed out at the towering buildings and stocky palm trees when something caught his ear: The police radio had come alive once again.

He snatched up his hat from the bench and began jogging over towards his cruiser a few yards from where he was relaxing. He broke out into a dash at the crystal-clear phrase of "all available officers."

Once he reached the vehicle's open window, he rushed into the driver's seat and perked his ears.

_"Two-four-six, we have confirmed reports of an active shooter at a home on fifth and Porter, over."_

"Shit!" Adrian spat.

_ "Understood,"_ came a gruff voice from another line, _"Officer Lloyd reporting in, over."_

Adrian put himself in gear, turned on his siren, and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. As he tore out from the barren parking lot onto the road, he spoke into his radio's handset. "Ten-four. Officer Lancaster reporting in. I'm on my way."

Porter Avenue was only a few minutes' drive from the beachside, given the meager traffic this time of night. The street lights and palm trees lining the highway were little more than a dark smear against the skyline of Miami Beach as the cruiser roared down the freeway.

Adrian glared over at the vacant seat beside him. Of all the days for his partner to call in sick...

The stitches in his forearm ached when he veered a hard right onto Porter Avenue, siren screaming into the night.

_Ninth street, eighth, seventh, come on, damn it!_

At long last, Adrian brought his vehicle to a screeching halt at its destination. The chipped white exterior of the grand house flashed red and blue against the siren lights from both his own cruiser and the one that was hastily parked in front of him. The police officer's heart continued to race as he focused his eyes on the front door of the home—or what was left of it, anyway. Even from across the front yard, he could tell it had been blown right off its hinges.

Adrian whipped open the car door and started for the house, pistol in hand. As he approached, the distressingly familiar scent of death came to him, and it grew more pungent still as he broke into a run. The metallic stench seemed to waft right out of the doorway as the officer set foot onto the porch, placed the foyer in his pistol sights and announced his presence.

"Miami PD!"

There came no response. Adrian was practically huffing the putrid air in anticipation as he focused his eyes on the end of the hall. Between the white floor tiles spread dark trails of blood, and a spray covered the far window—clearly the work of a firearm. Forcing away any feelings of trepidation, the officer marched forward and gripped his handgun as tightly as he could. Death and blood hung humidly in the air, now as overpowering as ever, near the end of the foyer. Adrian peeked around the corner on his right into a kitchen, never letting his pistol barrel stray from his line of sight. Another mural of blood was smeared across the white island countertop, nearly covering the entire surface. His eyes were guided by the gruesome stain to its owner, a man who had slid and collapsed onto the floor with several bullet holes in his once-white suit jacket.

The copper air was making the policeman's eyes run. With a fleeting glance at the corpse at his shoes, Adrian turned away and crossed the foyer once again. Tension refused to ease its grip on him as he leaned against the nearby staircase's newel post and looked on into the dining room on his left. At the foot of the mahogany dinner table, a balding man in a wrinkled mafia uniform leaned back limply in his chair with what looked like the end of a pool cue rammed into his chest.

Perhaps the lack of shock at all of this brutality was not so much of a good thing, Adrian caught himself thinking. He averted his gaze and focused his attention on the staircase.

Before he could do so much as take the first step, a gunshot exploded from above him.

Adrian took off in a sprint up the stairs, nearly stumbling over the landing in the process. He scrambled up the rest of the way and raised his gun, eyes scouring the vividly-decorated room wildly.

In the small lounge before him stood Miami PD officer David Lloyd. He remained collected in Adrian's sudden presence, his pistol barrel still smoking where it was pointed at the ground. Adrian could only stare, wide-eyed, at the figures strewn about the room behind him: several men, all clad in mafia attire, lay dead amongst their armaments and gaudy neon decor. One was collapsed face-down on a shattered glass coffee table, three more were slumped over against the bullet-riddled walls, torsos full of holes, and a fifth lay sprawled out on the floor, hunting knife sticking up from his exposed intestines.

"Put the bastard down." Lloyd cocked his square head at another prone figure on the floor before tucking his pistol into its holster.

Adrian followed his fellow officer's gaze to a corpse on the hardwood. It was a young man, tall and lanky in stature, laying face-down with a bullet hole blasted clear through the back of his head. His blue track jacket had been soaked dark with blood, and the rubber hare mask clutched in Lloyd's free hand made his identity clear. A golf club rested just out of the corpse's reach, dented and bloody.

_So some kid gets his brains blown out for following orders,_ Adrian thought grimly. _Poor bastard._

"Dave!" Another voice called out from down the hall as a door was thrown open. Adrian looked over his shoulder to see Lloyd's partner rush out from a nearby bedroom, pistol at the ready. He was an officer Adrian recognized the face of—blond-haired, vaguely forty-or-so and aged by time and copious trips to the bar—but his name did not come to mind. "What the hell happened?" As soon as his eyes met Adrian's, his brow furrowed.

"Fucker came at me," Lloyd responded coldly, "I had to take him out." Although the hat he wore obscured his eyes, Adrian found it hard to meet his gaze.

Without hesitation, Lloyd stepped over to the body and nudged it over onto its back with a flippant stroke of the leg. The agent's head lolled over to face the window, revealing a face slick with blood and tears. His green eyes were empty and wide, harshly contrasted by the quarter-sized hole blasted between them.

Those eyes were fearful, eyes of a desperate man with nothing left to lose.

Adrian turned and began storming down the stairs.

"H—hey," Lloyd's partner called after him, "where are you going? Hey! Come on, Lancaster!"

"The hell's your problem?" Lloyd added.

Adrian greeted the warm night with a shiver as he set foot out the front door to find the street abuzz: Pulled up the house were two ambulances and three more police cars, all flashing red and blue lights. Out in front of a nearby news van stood a young reporter speaking to her cameraman, and several police officers stood conversing together around their own vehicles. Adrian stepped aside to allow paramedics through, and he could hear one of them vomit at the scene inside. Cap low, he began walking in the direction of his vehicle when a voice from behind halted him.

"Hey, hey, wait!" It was Lloyd's partner, who rushed up to Adrian's side and placed an amicable hand on his shoulder. "Lan—Adrian—what's gotten you so bent out of shape?"

Adrian shoved the hand away. "What's it to you?"

It took a moment of impatient silence for the officer to find his words. "I mean, one look at a dead body and you're off like a bat outta hell? You saw those dead Russians on the ground floor, right? You've gotta grow some thicker skin, you're a cop for Christ's sake."

Adrian continued to walk. "It's not about the Russians."

The policeman was swift to catch up. He sharply turned Adrian around, who did his best to not make eye contact. He scowled, and his eyes seemed to glisten with venom as he looked his fellow officer up and down.

"Don't tell me you feel sorry for that masked bastard."

"Excuse me?"

"I'd say it wouldn't surprise me, what with that Fifty Blessings conspiracy bullshit you've bought into, but this is just crazy."

"What the hell are you talking about? You're still holding me up to that?"

Lloyd's voice interrupted the onslaught of accusations as his brutish frame cast a shadow from the doorway.

"Cool it, Manny." He motioned with a chiseled chin towards the street. "Looks like our work here is done, boys."

Adrian and Manny both looked out across the front lawn to see a pair of SWAT vehicles pull up, lights strobing and flashing against the row of houses across the road.

Adrian let out a sigh and held the bandage on the bridge of his nose in an attempt to alleviate a sudden headache.

"Right," he growled, "I'm going home. To hell with you two."

Without waiting for a response, he ignored Manny's glowering and shouldered past him. Once he crossed the police tape in the front yard, he was stopped by the dark-haired reporter whom he had seen earlier.

"Excuse me," she said with an affirmative nod at the cameraman behind her, "I'm Abby Shackleton from FBC News. Can you describe to us what happened in there, officer?"

Adrian stared into the news camera apprehensively and gently pushed away the microphone held up to his mouth.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said tiredly, "I was just leaving. You can get your story from the officers behind me once—"

"I can speak for him," Manny said quickly, nudging Adrian out of the way and eagerly leaning towards the camera. He reached out a hand to the reporter with a smile, though it was replaced by stern sobriety the moment he was in sight of the camera. "Officer Pardo."

The reporter gladly shook his hand. "Abby Shackleton. Now, officer, can you describe for us what happened in that house?"

Adrian turned and sulked back towards his cruiser with his jaw set.

_Oh, you've got to be kidding me..._

When he saw the phone company van parked directly behind his cruiser, he resisted the urge to full-on pound the driver's side door.

"Excuse me," he muttered as he knocked on the glass. With painful sluggishness, the window rolled down to reveal a blond-haired young repairman itching at his nose ring. "This is a crime scene, sir. I'm going to need you to leave."

The man smirked but said nothing. His icy blue eyes stared on from beneath his cap for several seconds before he rolled up the window. The van sputtered to life and belched up a puff of smoke before rolling off into the night.

Shoulders heavy, Adrian returned to the driver's seat of his police cruiser and stared down at the dashboard. He could still see the young agent's pale, deadened face—and knew that someday, that could be him.

He drove the thought away with a stern twist of the ignition key.

**11:03 PM**

**May 12th, 1989**

**Miami, Florida**

Samuel took a swig from his fifth cup of the night and dropped it into the wastebasket. Caffeine felt so artificial; the buzz he was getting was uncomfortable if anything, and his television was not helping things. He glanced over at the screen across the room to see what was on now, hoping for something interesting.

The middle-aged, balding reporter was still onscreen, but he at last wrapped up his speech with a monotonous _"back to you, Daniel."_

_ "Thank you, Patrick."_ The newscaster appeared onscreen once again, papers in hand against the FBC studio backdrop. He cleared his throat and glanced down at his notes. _"Last night marks yet another bloody episode in the line of Killer Beast spree killings across southern Florida."_ Samuel could not help but smirk to himself as footage came on screen of police tape surrounding a high-end suburban property. _"At 11:48 last night, locals reported gunfire coming from a house on southwest 104th street in Miami. Police arrived to find the home's twenty-three occupants dead. Security camera footage revealed a man in a chicken mask fleeing the scene."_

Samuel's hands were practically shaking when the phone began to ring.

"Who the hell calls at this hour?" He muttered as he pushed himself from his desk, switched off the television set and reached for the phone. "Hello?" He asked into the handset.

_Please tell me who I think this is._

There were several seconds of silence before Adrian's voice came on the line.

_"Oh, hey, Sam. I wasn't expecting you to actually pick up."_

Samuel could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. "Hi, Adrian. What's up?"

_"I know we haven't worked together in a while, but I need to have some 'last minute work' done down at the office that I could really use your help with. I've got the equipment I need, but could you come give me a hand?"_

"Fuck yeah, man, say no more. I'm bored as hell anyways. Where's it at?"

There was another period of silence as Samuel grabbed a marker, rolled up his sleeve and held the phone against his shoulder.

_"Meet me in an alley near northwest 16th street—"_

"Uh-huh."

_"—in Key West."_

Samuel's writing hand began to shake. Damn coffee.

"Wh—what?" He stammered.

_"Key West. I'm calling from a payphone."_

"That's over three hours away, dude. What the hell are you—?"

_"I—I, uh, got promoted, remember? Moved offices."_

Samuel restrained a groan and tried to keep the code straight.

"Right, I 'forgot,' sorry. How hard is this work of yours?"

Adrian swallowed loudly. His voice was shaky.

_"I haven't been meeting deadlines, and this is a pretty hefty workload. My boss might fire me if I slack off any more."_

Samuel began eyeing the bottom drawer of his desk across the room.

"Got it," he said, "I'll be there as soon as I can. See ya."

He hung up before Samuel could voice any lingering second thoughts. Three hours' ride was definitely worth Adrian's peace of mind, surely.

_Three hours..._

Mom was right, he should have bought a helmet for that motorbike.

Samuel reached down into the bottom drawer of the desk and searched around. The first thing he pulled out was the wolf mask, but he set it aside and continued to dig. At last he discovered what he was searching for: a worn cougar mask. Its right eye hole was torn open down the middle; Samuel had forgotten how that happened, but he was sure it added to the intimidation factor.

He reached back into the drawer and pulled out his secret weapon to go along with his disguise: an eight-inch, stainless steel butterfly knife.

Oh, how he would love to carve up some commie bastards with this baby.

**2:36 AM**

**May 13th, 1989**

**Key West, Florida**

There came a few taps on the left window—how many, Adrian wasn't sure. He lifted his head up from where it rested on the steering wheel and squinted the blurriness from his vision. He sat gazing down at the dashboard for a moment before three more taps on the driver's side window, considerably harder, put him into his right mind. Shaking himself fully awake, he looked out to see a black leather glove knocking on the glass with exposed knuckles.

Samuel's voice registered before his equally tired face did.

"Come on, wake up."

Adrian hurriedly unlocked the car door and checked his wristwatch.

_Damn it._

"I'm coming," the officer groaned as he opened the door and half-stumbled from the car into the pale orange glow of the alleyway's solitary floodlight. He gave his sore neck a rub and stood to face his friend. Judging by the reflection in Samuel's aviators, Adrian looked like hell. "Sorry, I needed to get some sleep before you got here."

He walked around the Mustang to the trunk and began tiredly sifting through his keyring.

"I don't blame you, man," Samuel said, "wish I could've gotten some shut-eye before riding out here. Got pretty sick of the palm trees and the ocean after three and-a-half hours. Well, more sick of 'em than usual, I mean."

Adrian at last got the trunk open and reached for the black duffel bag within. His heart sank once he zipped it open to find an assortment of firearms and remembered what he was doing in Key West in the first place.

• • •

"I appreciate you coming all the way out here for me," Adrian said, reaching into his Mustang's trunk with both hands. Gingerly, he pulled out a suppressed handgun and a walkie-talkie before holding them out to Samuel, who gladly received the gifts. "I've got these for you."

Samuel gripped the pistol firmly and inspected it in the dingy floodlight like a piece of fine art. He had forgotten how heavy a tiny handgun could be, it was as if he was handling a brick—a metallic, damn beautiful brick. He pulled the slide back with a satisfying _click-clack_ and aimed it out towards the street to get a feel for it.

"Hey!" Adrian snapped, "take your finger off the trigger and don't point it at anything you don't want to kill. It's not a toy!" He heaved a shotgun from the car's trunk and began loading shells into the bottom. "And for Christ's sake, hold it upright."

Samuel slowly slid the pistol into his belt—taking care to not touch the trigger as instructed—and walked over to where Adrian was gearing up.

"Lighten up," he muttered as he watched his fellow patriot throw his weapon's sling over his shoulder.

The officer either ignored him or didn't hear what he said.

"You have a mask?" Adrian asked before closing his car's trunk and pulling the pump of his shotgun.

"Sure do."

"Good." He produced a mask of his own from inside his jacket and began walking westward. "This way."

For a short while, the moonlit alleyways were silent, save the heavy stomping of boots and the excited trotting of sneakers against the concrete. Samuel did his best to not get ahead, and regularly found himself having to slow down to match Adrian's lumbering pace. All of that ammunition strapped to his denim jacket—to say nothing of the bulletproof vest Samuel noticed underneath it—was really doing a number on him.

Where the hell were they going, anyway?

Samuel was about to voice the question on his mind before Adrian finally came to a stop at the end of the alley. The young man removed his aviators and gaped at the sight of the building in front of them.

"We're here."

"Holy _shit._"

Before them stood a fifteen-floored behemoth of an office complex. Silhouettes in the windows of every floor paced, smoked and conversed with one another against drawn curtains, handling assault rifles and baseball bats. The frosted glass of the front doors shimmered with cold white fluorescent light, locked up tight beneath a lone security camera that swiveled slowly and methodically.

For the first time in a long time, Samuel could feel himself getting deeply uncomfortable over a hit. Jesus, he could barely imagine how Adrian was feeling. He placed an amicable hand on his partner's shoulder and put on the warmest smile he could.

"If you're not feeling up to it," he offered, "I could… go in for you."

"I'd appreciate it," Adrian said, nudging the hand away, "but this is a two-man job. You're not going in without me." Though his breathing was rapid and shallow, his voice was hard and his brown eyes burned with determination as they gazed into the light of the towering structure. He rolled up his sleeves, slipped a bald eagle mask down over his head and brought his shotgun to bear.

Samuel let out a breath and put his own mask on, jaw set. He couldn't quite tell if the sensation he was feeling was indeed anxiety or eager anticipation—this wasn't some seedy Miami strip club he was busting into; this was the real deal. Hesitantly, he brought his knife out and eyed the gangster standing inside with his back to the glass doors.

• • •

Adrian could only find the strength to move forward after his friend started sneaking across the road to the front of the building.

Once Samuel reached the sidewalk, he turned around to his partner and pointed up at the camera. Adrian acknowledged it with a nod and brought his weapon's sights up to the doors with the intent of breaching from a safe distance, hoping beyond hope that whoever was posted in the security office was not paying too much attention. Not that that would matter for long—he was about to alert everyone from here to the nearest police precinct of his presence. Gingerly, he pressed the barrel of his shotgun against the doors and placed his finger on the trigger.

The mobster behind the glass began to turn around, golf club in hand.

A deafening boom reverberated around the surrounding buildings and the glass doors imploded, sending a shower of twinkling shards down onto the stunned man as he stumbled back and clutched the bleeding buckshot wounds lining his torso. The cougar was swift to go in for the kill: the mobster was grabbed by the collar and his attacker's butterfly knife was thrust into the side of his throat. He was then shoved to the ground, groping at his neck and choking to death on the blood spurting out from his severed jugular.

"Come on," Adrian could hear his partner growl through the ringing in his ears, "let's move."

He clutched his Spas-12 with a viselike grip as he looked up from the man in his death throes to Samuel, whose eyes stared on savagely from behind the mask's snarling, blood-spattered visage. The image made him shudder; it was as if he was staring down an actual wild animal.

He had to force himself to oblige. With all the strength he could muster on three hours' sleep, he barreled into the second set of doors at the end of the vestibule. Once through the doors and inside the lobby, he put the nearest pastel suit in his sights and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The two armed men at the sides of the doors could hardly react in time when the head of the man between them exploded and plastered itself against the support columns.

The eagle pumped the expended shell from his weapon and fired it into the abdomen of the rightmost gangster, messily eviscerating him against the tile floor. Beside him, he saw the cougar shank the remaining man below the sternum and open fire on a small group of suits advancing with lead pipes and knives of their own.

A gangster emerging from a nearby break room drew the eagle's attention and a buckshot shell to the chest. The weapon's pump was pulled again, and its owner turned to another man in white and pulled the trigger. All too quickly, the cycle had repeated itself several more times before the squeeze of the trigger elicited nothing but a dull _click_. Even the man standing before the barrel was taken by surprise, but it did not matter: The Russian turned to the masked figure behind him. Samuel, now spattered with blood, punched him square in the face and went in for the kill. As the gangster dazedly clutched his broken nose, the cougar gripped him by the sides of his bald head and—with strength and ferocity Adrian had never seen from the lanky young man before—slammed it against the floor until it split open with a nauseating _crack_. Blood began oozing out between the once pristine white tiles as the body went limp.

Adrian could feel his bowels turn to ice as he watched the cougar stand up from his kill and inspect his handiwork across the lobby. Russian mobsters, nearly a dozen of them, lay dead—slashed to pieces, stabbed, disemboweled, shot, bludgeoned, and otherwise mutilated—with their white suits and blue shirts all turned red.

Adrian recounted.

Eleven—no, thirteen mobsters—all killed in the space of what must have been twenty seconds by one man.

Adrian resisted the urge to remove his mask and vomit, security cameras be damned.

"We're clear." The cougar stood before a nearby elevator, Makarov in hand, and pressed the call button, leaving behind a gruesome red handprint against the metal and polished marble. "Come on, man," he said, waving a bloodied hand, "are we going or what?"

Adrian kept his eyes glued to the elevator doors as he approached his partner's side, impeded substantially by his protective vest and overall fatigue.

"Awesome job back there," Samuel said, "this place is just crawling with Russkies, huh?"

Adrian could feel a subtle wrongness tug at his stomach when his friend said those words. Here Samuel was, holding a stolen pistol in white-knuckled hands and positively covered in blood after committing more murders than any self-respecting lawyer would defend—and he was speaking with the casualty of a college student stepping off of a theme park ride.

Adrian could not bring himself to force his musings aside once the elevator doors opened. Once he was inside, he removed his mask and sighed before leaning back against the mirror spanning the wall across from the closed doors.

"What's up?" Samuel asked.

Adrian continued to stare up at the bulbous white lamp on the ceiling and spoke with great difficulty.

"Let's wait a minute." He looked over at his partner and hesitated in saying anything more. "Take that thing off, would you?"

With a confused look from behind his disguise, Samuel slowly removed his blood-spattered mask.

What Adrian assumed would calm his nerves only brought him a pang of sorrow. Aside from the dark bags developing under his eyes, Samuel had not aged a day; this was the same young mechanic the police officer had met two years ago when he sent in his car for repairs, and the same one he pulled over for speeding only a few days afterward. Those days he was little more than an adrenaline junkie—or a thrill seeker, as he preferred to be called—with a love for his country.

Adrian could only stare mortified at what he had since become.

A word came to mind for only a moment—one as simple as it was horrifying in its implications—but Adrian lost it once Samuel's fist slammed the button for sub-level parking and the elevator began its descent.

"Let's get a move on before the cops decide to show up." The young man donned his mask once again and any semblance of humanity left his eyes in an instant. "I'll take the basement, you can take the top floor and we'll meet somewhere in the middle. Think you can handle that?"

Adrian shook himself from his trance and grabbed the two-way radio in his pocket, bringing it out for his partner to see.

"Uh, s—sure, sounds good. Don't forget this; we'll keep each other updated on our progress."

The cougar nodded in agreement and brought his handgun to bear as the elevator reached its destination. He gave his partner a salute before setting foot into the small room beyond.

From both sides of the doors outside came Russian shouts and curses.

Adrian slammed on the button to close the elevator doors before he could hear a gunshot and a frightened cry. With everything he could muster, he pressed the button for the top floor, clutching his shotgun more tightly than ever. As he had feared, the nap he took in his car did nothing for him—his legs threatened to give way and his brain was locked in a crushing vise. He silenced any second thoughts about his mission as he watched the LCD counter above the elevator controls tick upwards.

_Just get the job done,_ he thought less adamantly than he would have liked as he slipped on his mask, _don't look back. I'm fearless._

_ You're a coward._

He turned to the mirror beside him to see a pair of brown eyes staring into themselves from behind the stoic visage of a bald eagle. The man they belonged to stood shaking in his denim jacket, pointing a blood-spattered shotgun at the elevator doors and itching to pull the trigger again.

_You're doing what you wouldn't do back in '85._

_ Risking my life for my country? Who's a coward?_

_ You'd rather be massacring thugs under your government's nose for some shady hoodlums calling themselves patriots than taking a rifle to Hawaii like any self-respecting American would?_

"Fearless," Adrian repeated, looking up at the counter. Floor twelve and counting. "I'm no coward."

_You couldn't even pull off your first hit alone. You had to get Sam to go in with you. Look at him,_ he's _fearless._

There came that word again in the back of Adrian's fatigued mind—so nebulous, so frightening.

The elevator doors opened with a quiet chime.

The eagle did not give the gangster on the outside a chance to turn around. He shoved the barrel of his firearm between the opening doors and blasted his mullet right off, sending the corpse to the cyan carpet with a thud. A man across the hall screamed something—Russian or English, Adrian was unable to tell with the tinnitus shrieking in his ears—and drew a handgun. A bullet slammed into Adrian's ballistic vest before he could pump and fire again, blasting the man's arm to shreds and sending a gruesome spray of blood against the windows spanning the right wall.

_I'm no coward,_ Adrian thought with a spirited thrust of the pump. _Come at me, Red bastards._

• • •

This was what it was like to be truly alive.

The cougar stood up from where he was perched beside a shiny black sports car. The dull throbbing against the inside of his skull kept pace with the racing beat of his heart as he snatched a vodka bottle from the vehicle's open top and smashed it open against the hood.

The mobster before him clutched the welt on the side of his bald head, gripping a worn golf club in his free hand and glaring his adversary down through his sunglasses. He bared his bloody, jagged teeth like a warped set of fangs as he spoke.

"Bring it on, bitch!"

The masked man inwardly commended his opponent's boldness as he dodged the club and rammed the broken bottle into his neck.

As the mobster lay sputtering and choking to death on the parking garage's dusty floor, the predator removed his mask and flipped up his hood.

Samuel could feel the sweet adrenaline wane with each breath he took as he leaned up against a blood-spattered Lamborghini. Around him lay a dozen Russians dead, sprawled out against the concrete and leaning up against sports cars with smashed skulls and perforated torsos. With a smirk of self-congratulation, the proud patriot glanced up at a nearby CCTV camera and extended his middle finger at it. Not that anyone would notice the gesture; the guard in the security office was slumped over his keyboard with a slashed throat.

He leaned down to the corpse at his feet and unbuttoned its bloodstained jacket, reaching inside and grimacing at the pungent combination of blood and vodka that wafted up from the body. At last, he found a small handgun and tucked it into his belt.

The walkie-talkie in his pocket crackled to life as if to scold him. Adrian spoke with an authoritative bite that only a police officer could possess.

_"Top floor clear, over."_

Samuel snatched up the handset and quickly distanced himself from the corpse.

"Parking garage clear. Moving up to floor two. Uh, over."

_"Good to hear. Let's—before—"_

Adrian's voice devolved into a low garble before the connection dropped. Samuel's pulse picked up once again as he tried to garner a response.

"A—Adrian? Are you still there? Hello?"

Something vague and unpleasant began roiling up inside of him as he approached the elevator in which he had arrived, stepping over the bodies of two more mobsters and doing away with his plans of inspecting them as well.

He pressed the call button with a restless palm. The elevator remained closed, and he summoned it another four times.

"What the hell is taking this thing?"

His gaze travelled up the sleek metal frame and over to the right elevator. While the lights signifying the floors above the left doorway began to slowly tick down from fifteen, those on the right were moving upwards.

The light continued to climb higher as Samuel hammered the call button again.

"Come on, _move._"

By the time the left elevator's doors opened, the opposite light had reached the number fifteen.

• • •

The eagle tossed aside his empty M16 and did his best to tune out the gasping and panting of the last man, who was quickly bleeding out onto a nearby conference table from the bullet wounds in his chest and stomach.

What was once a dull throb of a headache had graduated into a full-blown migraine, and it was only intensified by the sickly reek of blood against Adrian's rubber mask. Gripping his head, he sat down in a nearby leather armchair and gazed out the window across the room. He could hardly see the city of Key West past the room's bright reflection, but the full moon shone in all its glory between his exhausted form and the doorway behind him.

_I did it. Who's a coward now?_

The mobster on the conference table had gone still, and the only answer Adrian received was silence. The officer looked over his shoulder into the hallway and frowned.

_Only three floors down._

Sluggishly, Adrian pulled himself up from the chair before snatching his handheld radio from his jacket.

"Top floor clear, over."

Adrian stepped out of the bullet-stricken doorway and into the hall. It took a moment for Samuel to respond.

_"Parking garage clear. Moving up to floor two. Uh, over."_

Adrian cast a fatigue-glazed eye towards the pair of elevators across the corridor.

"Good to hear," he said. "Let's move along before law enforcement arrives. Over and out."

At the curious absence of static or feedback of any kind, he shoved the radio back into his pocket.

_Knew I should have gotten new batteries for the damned thing._

As he traversed the hall on legs like rubber, Adrian looked over the panoramic window on his left, which was blemished by the pockmarks of small arms fire and a large spray of dried blood. Bullet holes riddled the opposite wall, as did collapsed picture frames, small palm plants that sagged in their square pots, and a devastated CCTV camera that hung limply from a bundle of wires above the elevator door frames. Four corpses littered the hall, their deep scarlet blood staining the cyan carpeting, the white walls and even Adrian's own clothing in some places.

What a scene for Key West PD to come back to, he mused grimly.

He reached his destination at last. As his heart sank at the thought of more bloodshed, the right elevator chimed before he could press a button.

He froze. His holster was empty.

"There he is!"

_Shit!_

He scrambled back to see four suited men emerge from the door, all glares and bared teeth. Before he could even look around the floor for a suitable weapon, the frontmost mobster brought back his bat and swung.

Adrian found himself on the ground, bleary-eyed. He thought he was on the ground, at least; he could hardly tell which way was up. There was nothing but dazzling white lights stinging his eyes and ringing in his ears. He brought a hand up to the side of his head—his mask was no longer on, but what he could feel was hot and sticky.

A voice, sharp as a blade, cut through the tinnitus.

_"Dukov, you fucking weakling! He is not even dead!"_

Two pairs of figures emerged from the light, and searing pain came with them: in front, a rather lanky-looking mobster stood above Adrian with an aluminum bat in his hands—presumably Dukov. The other man in front, the one who was speaking, glared down at Adrian with piercing gray eyes. He readied a rifle and took aim at his victim's face.

"I will finish him off myself," he growled.

Adrian stared down the barrel of the gun in exhaustion and resignation. He could recall the eyes of the Fifty Blessings cohort he witnessed on Fifth and Porter—a bullet to the skull felt appropriate indeed.

There was a soft sound, something like a bell chime.

Then came the gunshot.

Adrian's eyes opened and the throbbing pain against the side of his head swept over him in full force. The man with the rifle had collapsed on top of him, his shaved head marked by a bullet hole. He heaved the body off of his chest and leaned up to see what was happening.

Standing at the elevator doors was Samuel, smoking pistol in hand. The mobsters beside Dukov ran forward, daggers drawn. Adrian watched with morbid fascination as one was shot twice through the chest and the other was pistol whipped across the face and blasted in the neck. Dukov, now trembling, held his bat in a white-knuckled hand as the cougar tossed his weapon aside, spreading his arms out as if to invite the remaining gangster to his fate. The bold Russian charged forward and reared his weapon back. With the man in the way, Adrian had a hard time seeing what exactly happened afterwards, though that mattered little: Dukov, now disarmed, was gripped by the suit collar and heaved around.

The panoramic window shattered spectacularly as Dukov was thrown into it. Countless twinkling shards were formed from the bullet-weakened glass and were sucked from the room by the howling winds. His screaming came to an abrupt end shortly after impact, leaving nothing but the cold, gusty air and Samuel's exhilarated panting. Adrian could only stare wide-eyed at the void that was once glass.

The cougar approached and reached out a bloody hand. When Adrian hesitated in reacting, Samuel removed his mask.

"You all right, man?"

Even sans the cougar's facade, his eyes harbored no humanity. Something posing as concern crossed his face as Adrian's gaze flicked between his friend and the shattered window, mouth agape.

Adrian tentatively took the hand and was pulled to his feet, careful not to trip. Once he was let go, however, he immediately stumbled and had to lean against a nearby wall for support. The wind whipping across his bloodied face did nothing to help his coordination as he held himself still and closed his eyes.

"I'm..." The words were raw in Adrian's throat and his head refused to stop spinning. "I think... I think I've got a concussion."

"We've still got floors to clear out."

"To hell with that." Adrian turned to face his partner, but his eyes became fixated on something new in his hand—something he dreaded he saw properly. "Wait, what's that?"

Samuel tried to hide it behind his back, but Adrian snatched it up. His heart seized up once he realized what it was.

He found himself holding a small black wallet, one that was decidedly not Samuel's. He opened it up in shaky hands to find an ID card displaying the photo of a narrow-shouldered man with the name Vitaly Dukov. The top pocket was completely empty.

That enigmatic word finally came to his mind: _Sociopath._

• • •

Adrian stared down at the wallet in his hands for several of the longest and most painstaking seconds of the night. His once pallid face began to redden until it nearly blended in with the blood covering the right side of his head.

His voice began as a nearly inaudible rasp.

"What is this?"

He threw the wallet to the ground, nearly losing his balance, and stabbed his finger down at it as his tone escalated to a roar.

_"What the fuck is this?!"_

"I... it..."

Samuel could hardly raise his voice above a choked murmur. His partner gripped his hoodie's collar tightly and continued in a voice that was lower in volume but no less volatile, eyes narrow and dark.

"They're just Russians, are they? You son of a bitch, you know why I dragged your ass down here? You know why I kill these fucking Russians? It's because my ass is on the line; because if I don't, I'll have some masked bastard come into my home and put a bullet in my head, or I'll be found dead in some torched car out in the sticks, _that's_ fucking why!" He released Samuel's collar to retrieve the wallet from the floor, which he held up to his face as he spoke through clenched teeth. "And look at you. You treat this like it's some kind of fucking game, you think this is fun. You think it's fun to put on a mask and take out some bad guys in your spare time, do you?" Samuel shook his head in reply, a gesture more for himself than for Adrian. "This isn't a game, and it never was. How about you keep that in mind before looting the bastard you decide to throw from the top of a fucking building?"

He tossed the wallet to the floor and took up his nearby eagle mask from the carpet, which he wadded up and threw out onto the wind and into the dark streets below.

As his partner stalked off towards the elevator with clenched fists, Samuel stared out into the vast ocean horizon with heavy shoulders. The discarded eagle mask, a white leaf in the breeze, swayed gracefully on its way to the concrete somewhere far below. With a slow hand, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a recently-acquired wad of dollar bills. He held the money out, three hundred dollars of American and Russian currency in all, and bid it a bitter farewell as he released it into the night. There came the barely-audible wail of distant police sirens over the fierce wind as the cash fluttered down into oblivion.

"Sam," Adrian called out, "get your ass over here. We're leaving now."

Samuel followed him along into the waiting elevator with his hands in his pockets.

The air within the elevator felt heavy as the two began their descent. Samuel made himself as comfortable as he could against the cold handrail on the wall opposite the doors as Adrian leaned back next to him, swaying from side to side with an assault rifle in hand. The cop kept the barrel trained on the doors as best he could, never breaking eye contact with the space beyond his iron sights. The back-right side of his head was barely recognizable now, nothing but blood and sticky, matted hair that was a well-groomed mullet not ten minutes earlier.

"You're not coming with me again." Adrian, stone-faced, was the first to break the thick silence. "Understand?"

Samuel bit his lip. "Yeah."

"We have never been affiliated beyond friendship, and you only understand Fifty Blessings on a superficial level."

"Right."

"And as soon as we're in Miami, you're giving me those masks back so I can torch them. Erase my phone messages and I'll move my things out of your garage." He received no reply at first. He glanced a bloodshot eye at his accomplice and scowled. "You hear me?"

Samuel gripped his mask in both hands. "Of course."

He glanced up at the LCD counter beside the door. Floor five and counting.

"Jesus." Adrian sighed and tore away the bandage across the bridge of his nose to reveal a scar. As deep as it was, the thing looked absolutely tame compared to the injuries sustained tonight. "I should've never gotten us into this shit."

The sudden chime of the elevator had both men's eyes fix themselves to the doors. Floor three. Adrian put his finger on the trigger while Samuel donned his mask and readied his fists.

As soon as the doors opened, a pair gun-wielding gangsters awaiting their unwelcome guests was shredded apart by an ear-splitting salvo of gunfire. Adrian dropped his now empty rifle magazine and clutched at a new one on his munitions belt with a trembling hand.

"Let's... let's keep moving," he said breathlessly as he reached for the ground floor button.

"Wait!"

Samuel gripped his partner's wrist in one hand and held down the open door button with the opposite thumb.

"_What?_" Adrian asked sharply. He followed Samuel's gaze to where his own finger was ready to jab down: the buttons for floors one and two had lit up. Above them, more buttons—eight, eleven, four, five—began to flick on.

"We've got company."

Samuel dashed from the elevator, retrieved a pistol from beside a mass of red flesh and hot, embedded metal that was once a man and put a bullet into the CCTV camera above the elevator doors.

"What the hell are you doing?" Adrian asked.

Before Samuel could say anything, there came something akin to a massive firecracker going off below him—a bang but not quite a gunshot—followed by several anguished cries and a few shotgun blasts which nearly shook the floor.

Samuel turned back to his accomplice and his stomach dropped. "I don't think that's the mob shooting at each other."

Adrian stood ramrod stiff at the elevator doors, his once narrow eyes wide with their pinkish whites in full view. "What do we do?"

Samuel gripped his handgun tightly as he crossed the vacant office foyer and gazed down a nearby corridor. Through the vertical windows at the end of the hall, red and blue lights were flashing menacingly against the building across the street.

"Follow me," he said as he began making his way down the hall. "We can't just waltz out the front door with the cops on our tail, and that elevator's bound to get called down real soon. Think we can get out through an office window from here?"

Adrian was incredulous and looked ready to speak, but was interrupted by another shotgun blast from downstairs. He followed his partner along with a staggering, disoriented gait as if he was drunk, the worn bulletproof vest beneath his jacket doing little to help his stance.

Samuel had rushed up to the vertical windows at the end of the hallway. Judging by their narrow width, he thought, he would hardly be able to make it through without getting cut open on all sides by jagged glass. That, and he could hardly see the ground; this room was too brightly lit, and he could only see his blood-soaked jeans reflecting from where the cement should have been. Who knew where he would be landing from this height?

"Too narrow," he said, "maybe the offices have wide enough windows."

Adrian was thinking the same thing, as Samuel found him kicking in a nearby door before he was even finished speaking.

"Who the hell?" Came a voice from within.

After barking a threat into the newly opened room, the cop waved his friend forward and stepped inside.

Samuel was about to move when a door opened a few dozen feet back down the hallway. He stared motionless at the door standing ajar beneath the faint green glow of a sign signifying the stairs, wielding his pistol in a hand of steel. However, no one came out, police or mafia; only a small object rolled forth, a small cylinder no bigger than a water bottle.

• • •

Adrian smashed the door in with a viscera-stained boot and aimed through his blurry sights at a heavyset mobster sitting behind a desk in a dark suit.

"Don't move a goddamn muscle," he snarled, taking aim between the man's eyes. The mobster duly complied, rolling his chair back against the wall with his pudgy hands held high above his head and muttering something in Russian.

The officer looked the small office over. It was a small but tidy affair, with a light teal armchair set up beside a glass coffee table and desk adorned with a bouquet of flowers, an empty pistol magazine and what looked like a small packet of cocaine. Across the room, he was relieved to see, was a suitably wide window overlooking the alleyway he and Samuel had arrived from. With an air of caution, he crept across the room, footfalls silent against the carpet, and glanced down at the road. What he saw caused his heart to skip: there was not a single police cruiser pulled up to the building, but four SWAT vans.

A door opened out in the hall, and Adrian whipped around with his weapon at the ready.

Like a lightning bolt, down the corridor there came the return of the firework's _bang_, accompanied by a flash of light so intense that Adrian nearly stumbled in his concussed state; it hit him like a sledgehammer to the skull.

Samuel, meanwhile, collapsed onto his back and clutched at his masked face.

"_Fuck!_" He screamed, "I can't see! I can't see!"

Faster than he thought his weak legs could carry him, Adrian rushed up to the door before slamming it shut, locking it, and pressing himself up firmly against it.

"It's the SWAT team!" He cried. He spurred his writhing partner with a kick to the side. "You just stared straight into a goddamn flash grenade! On your feet! Barricade the door with something, I'm breaking the window."

As Samuel slowly began to rise, panting and shuddering, Adrian aimed at the window and opened fire into it, holding the trigger down until his gun clicked dry.

More gunfire erupted from somewhere outside the door. Samuel was putting a chair in place below the doorknob, holding a hand steady above his mask's eyeholes to shield himself from the light.

The mobster sitting at the desk had ducked cowering behind it, eyes glued fearfully to the door.

Adrian turned back to the empty space that was once a window, tossed his gun aside and looked down. Between the sidewalk and the lawn lining the exterior of the building was a row of hedges, though it was only a few feet in width.

Even if he missed it wouldn't be too painful, he attempted to convince himself; his head already felt like it was split open. Something pounded against the door. Adrian looked down again and steeled himself.

"What the fuck are we waiting for?" Samuel was standing at his side now, fidgeting with what certainly wasn't epinephrine anymore.

"You tell me. Thirty feet's not so bad, right?"

The door was struck again, but along with it came the sounds of the lock breaking and the chair barricade hitting the floor.

Adrian did not look back as he flung himself over the short sill.

The next thing he could register was the feeling of cold asphalt against the side of his face. There was nothing before his eyes but fuzzy stars and blurry, strobing police lights. His entire body was aching now. With a groan, he rolled over onto his chest and tried to heave himself up, only for a surge of pain to shoot up through his left shoulder. A wince escaped him as he collapsed and looked up at the SWAT van looming over him like the shadow of death. Under the bottom of the vehicle Adrian could see the even row of shrubbery he had aimed for, along with a slender shape approaching from the other side.

Samuel's strained voice, muffled and faint, reached his ears.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh _shit!_"

A pair of blood-spattered tennis shoes entered Adrian's field of vision as hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him up. He wanted to say something about his aching left side, but all he could muster was a pained groan. He stood up on weak legs and had to grip Samuel's leaf-covered shoulders for support. The cougar continued to sport its vicious snarl, but the eyes beneath were flickering with deep unease.

"Jesus Christ, man!" He gasped, "you rolled right off the roof that van, I'm surprised you're not dead!"

_So am I,_ Adrian would have said if he could bring himself to speak. Samuel took him by his good arm and started making his way towards the alleyway from where they had arrived.

As he tried to keep up, Adrian looked back at the compromised mob hideout through strained eyes: what was once a pair of glass doors was now little more than an obliterated metal frame. The vestibule inside was now in full view, dead body and all. Bursts of gunfire and dim muzzle flashes emanated from the lower floors, accompanied by sprays of bright red blood against the windows. It looked so imposing only a few minutes earlier, he thought, so magnificent.

He was ushered forward by a tug of the arm.

By the time he reached his Mustang, Adrian could do little more than stagger. Immediately, he unhooked his munitions belt and clumsily slipped off his bloodied jacket as quickly as he could with a swollen, painful shoulder. The ballistic vest was going to be a bitch, he thought sourly.

"Hey," he said to Samuel, who was approaching his motorbike and taking off his mask, "how's your vision?"

Samuel fished around in his pocket for his aviators and put them on. "It's doing better now, thanks for asking."

"Good. Get in the driver's seat here."

Samuel took pause. "What?"

"I need medical attention and I'm in no condition to drive. I need you to—"

"What about my bike, man?"

There came a shout from down the alley, towards the office complex.

"Your fucking bike doesn't have a dozen guns in the back. Leave it."

Another shout, clearer this time, was all it took to make Samuel spring into action:

_"Police! Hands above your heads!"_

Samuel produced his suppressed handgun from his belt and shot into the floodlight above him, sending a shower of sparks and glass onto his discarded motorbike and plunging him and Adrian in the cover of darkness. Adrian took the cue and dove into the passenger's side of his car. His partner sat himself in the driver's seat, fumbling a little with the stick shift at first, but before too long the car was speeding out from the dingy alleyway and into the streets of Key West proper with pistol fire ringing out behind it.

For several minutes, the two sat in silence. Samuel gripped the steering wheel with pale white knuckles, occasionally turning at corners and changing lanes with stiff, jerky movements. Adrian had managed to remove his vest now, and the open windows' breeze was ice cold against his bare arms. He looked down at his left shoulder to see a dark, swollen bulge and winced, and his reflection in the rear view mirror elicited similar unease. He glanced down at the side-view mirror, fully expecting a police cruiser to begin trailing him with sirens blaring.

He and his friend remained in uncomfortable silence as he did his best to block the night's events from his mind. Christ, did his head feel hollow more than anything. He looked out at the palm trees lining the streets and scowled. He was sick of palm trees, sick of these muggy nights, sick of Florida.

_What I'd give to be back in Dallas._

He turned a heavy eye to Samuel. The young man's haunting face in the elevator came to mind, fresh and disheartening as ever.

_Even friendship?_

Friendship with a man like this? A fervently patriotic, cold-hearted sociopath? Someone who would massacre a room full of men for some extra cash in the name of America without hesitation?

Adrian could feel his eyes turn heavy in their sockets as he struggled to come to an answer. He leaned forward over the dashboard as a cold fatigue overcame him. He needed to rest. He needed to think.


	6. Sleight of Hand

**_11:51 PM_**

**December 16th, 1991**

**Moscow, Russia**

The only thing that could be seen from the roof through the swirling snow were rows upon rows of panel buildings: ancient, rotting apartment blocks that had succumbed to frost, time, and vandalism. The air, although cold enough to numb Brody's nose, only had the power to nip at his gloved hands which rested atop a long-defunct ventilation unit.

The stairwell door opened from behind, and Yuri was quick to join his side. "There you are. What brings you up here this time of night? Should you not be allowing your leg to heal?"

Brody turned to see the man placing a cigarette between his yellow teeth and fishing into his coat pocket for something. "I couldn't sleep, is all—figured I'd come up here to unwind. Nothing to do with the leg, that's just fine."

Beneath the snow pants and gauze the hole in his flesh continued to gnaw with so much more ferocity than the winter cold ever possessed.

Yuri cracked a smirk around his cigarette. "Good to hear, my friend." He had retrieved a small lighter, which he attempted to activate with flick after flick of the thumb. On the fourth strike, a dim flame came to life. "I have something to offer you. Since you tell me you are feeling better, I think you are able to come with me for our payment."

"Payment? What for?"

"For Alek's head, of course! You didn't take that bullet for nothing, did you?" Yuri's simper widened into a tobacco-rotted grin.

"Right. What was the name of the client again?"

"Makar Tsaryov is his name. I am surprised you've forgotten; he is one of the biggest names in Moscow's drug trade—certainly bigger than any of the dogs pushing their shit alongside us. What do you say, care to come with me to meet him? You deserve your reward in person."

Yuri held out a red-gloved hand, which Brody looked down at in contemplation. The name Tsaryov did not bring any faces to mind—not that Brody was involved in the narcotics trade regardless—but the prospect of meeting a high-ranking drug lord who was purportedly Moscow's biggest was as daunting as it was tempting. The thought of a change in scenery, however, was more than welcome; a man as rich as Tsaryov, a top-ranking reaper of profits from Moscow's countless degenerates and addicts, must have had his own villa.

Brody shook his comrade's hand with frost-stung fingers. "All right, I'll come. You can go down to the car, I'll catch up with you in a few minutes."

Yuri nodded and made his leave as Brody found his gaze traveling back to the derelict buildings across the street.

_You'd better have a mansion waiting for me, anything but this squalor._

**_12:44 AM_**

**December 17th, 1991**

**Khimki Forest, Russia**

The jalopy came to a sputtering stop, jolting Brody from the daze of half-sleep. Through the windshield, the car's single working headlight turned the falling snowflakes into small glowing dancers against a seemingly endless road, which was surrounded on both sides by imposing trees and shrouded in darkness.

Yuri, in the driver's seat beside him, pulled the key from the ignition and killed the lights.

"Why are we stopping?" Brody looked out through the cracked, rime-coated windows on all sides, but there were no structures of any sort in sight, let alone a villa. Trees and more towering trees, sagging under the weight of snow and frost, grew as far and as tall as he could see as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the blackness. "Don't tell me the car broke down."

"Not at all," Yuri replied, "we've arrived."

Brody looked around the car again, bewildered. He stepped out of the vehicle and whipped around, seeing nothing but the vast timberland around him and a few abandoned cars littering the sides of the lonely highway alongside rusted road signs. Faintly through the whistling wind and stinging snowfall he could hear a wolf howl.

Brody sighed and folded his balaclava down over his numbing face. "You've got to be joking, Yuri..."

His partner said nothing as he stepped from the driver's seat, donned his own mask and began walking his way around the car, turning on a flashlight and beckoning to his partner. Brody focused on the bright beam of light pointed ahead of Yuri to see a sign through the trees, frosted over and peeling from the chain link fence it clung to. What little Russian Cyrillic remained legible he identified as _НЕ ВХОДИТЬ_—"do not enter."

The fence itself was easy enough to cross; the barbed wire lining the top had long since dulled and fallen down in places. As the mercenaries trekked on, the woods thickened and the snowfall turned sparse. With nothing but a flashlight and an old, scrawled note to go by, however, Yuri continued to lead with confidence, occasionally looking down before his boots and not once having to stop to regain his bearings.

After about ten minutes, Yuri halted. Brody peered through the thinning tree line ahead of them and could make out the warm glow of a barrel fire through the falling snow, along with a bright blue light emanating from somewhere deeper into the clearing behind a dilapidated structure. Beside the open flame was a figure leaning against the wall of the building, armed with a rifle and wearing a cautious frown. Brody slowed his pace, as requested by a swift hand gesture from his guide. Turning his flashlight to himself, Yuri raised his free hand above his head.

"Excuse me!" he called out. There came an immediate loading of rifle bolts—more than one. "We have come for the payment of Alek Malyshev's head!"

The guard let out a bark of a response, his breath turning to mist in the wintry air. "Two of you?"

"Yes. It's Yuri, and my partner is with me."

The guard turned to the blackness behind him and muttered something to unseen company. A moment later another gunman, dressed in a shabby red hooded jacket, stepped into the light. "Come forward," he said.

Yuri moved first, with slow, methodical steps. Brody looked to him for a moment, wondering whether he should come forward himself. The hooded guard said something inaudible to his partner before adding a louder, "you, in the coat! Come here. Slowly."

With leaden feet and raised arms, Brody fell into step with Yuri, gaze flicking from one rifle barrel to the other. The first guard to be confronted, a lanky, rat-faced young man in a snow-speckled tracksuit, stared Brody down through his Mosin–Nagant sights with a glower of suspicion.

The other guard lowered his rifle once his new company came into the light, a smile spreading across his wrinkled features. "Relax, these are the guys. Good to see you, Yuri, I hardly recognized you through that mask."

The man in the tracksuit lowered his weapon as he continued to glare between Brody and Yuri both, and Brody allowed his shoulders to loosen up.

The hooded guard turned to Brody next, his smile fading immediately. "And you must be Yuri's friend. Victor, right?"

Brody lowered his arms. "Right. And you're one of Tsaryov's lackeys, I presume."

"I don't recognize your accent," the lanky one cut in with a dark look. "You're not Russian, that's for damn sure."

"Gentlemen!" Yuri exclaimed, "shall we get on with the proceedings already? I'm sure your boss is eager to meet us."

The wrinkled guard ignored any more of his comrade's comments. "Of course. Both of you put your hands up again for me." He began patting down either side of Yuri's torso, slowly and methodically.

The man in the tracksuit did the same with Brody, although he did not once let his disdainful expression falter and he carried out the task without much care or skill, Brody could tell.

"What's this?" he could hear the elder gopnik ask, hand resting at Yuri's side.

"Just a precaution," Yuri replied as he took his pistol out and offered it handle-first.

"You can keep it. Tsaryov holds you in high enough regard."

"His friend's clean," Brody's inspector said, stepping back to the wall and lighting a cigarette.

The hooded guard looked his guests up and down one last time before turning and making his way down the length of the small shack, leaving his partner at his post. Yuri tailed behind him and Brody followed suit, but not before catching a growled slur from the young man they were leaving behind.

Around the corner of the decrepit shack, the full scale of Tsaryov's meeting place rested frigid and rickety in all its "glory." The area was devoid of any trees, either the work of nature or logging, and in place of any firs stood the large metal skeletons and rotting wooden frames of an ancient lumber mill. Bright portable floodlights had been placed between the buildings and under high corrugated metal rooftops, setting the falling snowflakes aglow with a harsh blue-white flare. Standing rigid in doorways and squatting beside blazing barrel fires were a dozen gopniki, all armed with implements ranging from worn tire irons to secondhand assault rifles and glaring the newcomers down as they trekked through the labyrinth of squalor.

"You'll love the owner of the place, Victor," the guard leading the mercenaries spoke with a cool tone. "He's got everything—the purest heroin, uncut coke, even Nekro. Best supplier this side of Moscow, believe me."

Brody did not reply. He continued to follow closely behind and averted his gaze from the multitude of armed men staring him down with venom in their eyes.

Eventually the trio emerged into a larger, fenced clearing amid the husks of old buildings. The concentration of thugs had thinned from the surrounding area, with only two men waiting at the end of a flat, snowy expanse that must have once been home to stacks of cut logging. Floodlights were few here as well; the men ahead of the mercenaries were hardly visible and illuminated only by a small barrel fire set beside them, their features rendered indistinguishable by the blowing snow.

The guide stepped aside. Brody stared out at his greeting party with hesitation. Yuri tugged at his coat's sleeve, drawing his attention and sparking a twinge of irritation.

"This is Tsaryov's place, is it?" He hissed, "the biggest drug lord in Moscow lives in this shithole?"

"This is just a rendezvous point, not his fucking home," Yuri growled back. "Keep your mouth shut here, Victor; these people aren't very fond of Americans, and they would prefer to not be reminded of where your accent comes from. Leave the talking to me and everything will be fine. Now follow my lead."

Slowly, Yuri began approaching the pair of thugs and Brody fell into step. Around them floodlights flared to life with a low buzz, bringing the hired guns' clients into full focus: Not two, but four men all stood in front of a two-story wooden hovel, and a pair of timber wolves flanked them, marred with gruesome scars and fitted with black leather collars as they waited with hindquarters lowered.

Even Yuri could not keep the creeping anxiety out of his voice at the sight. "Hello, gentlemen. We've come for—"

"Yuri." The middlemost figure smirked beneath his blue hooded jacket, eyes just visible in the shrouded light of the floodlamps. "It's good to finally do business with you. Welcome back."

He turned to the men around him and ordered them to step back with a curt flick of the wrist—presumably this was Makar Tsaryov himself. The guard closest to his side, a seven-foot-tall bull of a man in a shabby gray hooded sweater, folded his arms and looked upon Brody with contempt. His hazel eyes took on a golden glow in the light of the barrel fire beside him.

"Come, you two," Makar reached up and pulled back his hood, "take those masks off. We're all friends here." The young man's face was as gaunt as those of the wolves flanking him, which, coupled with a head of unkempt black hair, a multitude of facial piercings and sunken eyes, gave him an appearance more appropriate for a tweaker than a drug lord. His most striking feature, however, was a long serpent tattoo winding up the bridge of his nose and ending somewhere unseen above his shaggy hairline—too detailed and colorful to be a lowlife Russian's work. Something about him seemed less than unanticipated—something seemed very wrong. Brody could feel a cold weight developing in the pit of his stomach at the sight of him.

Yuri was swift to take off his balaclava. Brody, meanwhile, did not react. Tsaryov's smile faded before his lips twisted into a scowl.

"Victor, is it?" Tsaryov glowered. "Are you stupid or fucking deaf? Let me say it again: take that mask off. Show me your face when you do business with me. I'm not one to be disrespected, understand?"

Brody continued to stare at the man as something wary tugged at the back of his mind.

Yuri was quick to cover for him. "He doesn't understand Russian too well, you see—"

Tsaryov cut in, in perfect English: "Take that mask off, you American dog fucker, or I'll have Nikolay here break your fingers, understand?" The brawny man behind him cracked his knuckles and sneered. Tsaryov then turned to Yuri with a derisive smile of his own and returned to his Russian tongue. "He _is_ American, isn't he? Thank you for reminding me, Yuri." Brody acquiesced and shot a glare at Yuri, who was too busy staring mortified at his bilingual client. "Now! Where were we? Nikolay," he turned to the burly guard, "go in and get the cash for the gentleman and his friend."

With a nod, Nikolay turned and lumbered into the wooden hovel behind the congregation, the door slamming shut with a resounding bang.

Tsaryov was once again focused on Brody now, any amicability long gone. This time, however, what was once vitriol had boiled down into something unreadable. "So, Yuri, you've never introduced me to your friend before." He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and began making his way towards the mercenaries.

"Well," Yuri hemmed, "he's not the most outward of people..."

Tsaryov stood in front of Brody now, looking up and down his face with icy blue eyes. Brody found himself reciprocating. That serpent tattoo—he had seen it before.

Tsaryov seemed to come to a conclusion before Brody could. His eyes grew wide, and his face, once flushed from the cold, paled. He began backing away as he continued to study Brody's features with a slim gawk.

He turned to Yuri with a snarl, stabbing a finger at Brody. "I'm not doing business with this man."

"What?" The information seemed to take a moment to register with the Russian mercenary, as it did with Brody himself.

"We'll give you your half of the cut, Yuri, but then you need to pack up that shit and leave."

Even the men around Tsaryov began to look at each other with confused utterings. Brody himself could only watch as their boss began creeping backwards towards the shack, head swiveling back wildly to check for Nikolay's return.

"Bullshit!" Yuri looked to his partner. "What's Victor got to do with this?"

Tsaryov turned to Yuri with a mad grin—disbelieving, hysterical. "You don't know who you're working with, do you? I've seen crackheads come to me, lowlifes, lunatics, freelance killers like yourself—but this man is something else, I've seen it!"

"What the hell is he talking about, Victor?"

Brody could bring no memories of Tsaryov to mind. Regardless, he did what he felt was necessary: he drew his karambit knife from inside his coat and brandished it, more of a cautionary action or intimidation tactic than anything else. It seemed to work; at the sight of the weapon Tsaryov could only stare with jaw slack and eyes set.

"Listen here—" Brody stopped himself when the drug lord drew a large silver handgun and pointed it between his eyes. The guards all raised their bats and tire irons as Yuri threw up his hands.

"Woah!" Yuri cried, "Settle down! Jesus Christ, what's gotten into you? Put your weapons away! Victor, what the fuck are you doing?"

The guards kept their weapons ready.

"T—take your shit and leave!" Tsaryov yelled back, "Nikolay, get the fuck out here! You!" His eye contact with the American remained unbroken. "Drop that knife! I'm not fucking kidding!"

Those around him raised their weapons, gazes all set on Brody as he released his grip on his knife and let it drop to the snow without a sound. The wolves had lowered themselves to their haunches with teeth bared, growling and slavering.

That damned tattoo, the Russian's serpent, was the only thing Brody could focus on. It was fresh in his mind, from somewhere, but not as clear as what it elicited from within him: a deep-seated, seething hatred. Perhaps it was the combination of the thin face and the alarmed blue eyes along with the ink, but the only thing on Brody's mind now was an overwhelming antipathy for Makar Tsaryov. How he would like to see the man with a smoking hole in his head.

One of the hooded guards approached him and reached for his arm.

Brody retaliated by punching him in the throat and diving for his karambit.

The first gunshot sounded, an explosion that lit the snowy night, and the gopnik fell to the ground with a good quarter of this head blown away. The gun smoked in Tsaryov's hands.

"Shit!" The drug lord hissed through gritted teeth.

Brody reached for a lunging wolf's neck and slashed into its collar, and another two shots rang out. The first missed completely, while the second grazed his jacket's sleeve. He looked up to see the cabin door slam, with Tsaryov absent and Yuri standing over the bodies of two men and the other wolf with his smoking PB pistol in hand.

"Fuck!" Yuri snarled to himself. He donned his balaclava and rushed around the side of the building and out of sight.

Brody was swift to approach the cabin's front door, curved knife in hand and dripping blood into the trodden snow. Before he could reach the knob, however, it turned by itself and the door swung in.

Brody next found himself face-down in the snow with a throbbing sensation across the side of his face, head swimming. He tried to right himself, but a boot slammed into his stomach and knocked the wind out of him. The hulking form of Nikolay towered over him, fists clenched and ready to deliver a second punch. He muttered something, unheard through the painful ringing, voice deep and bitter.

Everything was blurry. Brody could feel his right cheek swell as he gasped for air. Nikolay sent another sharp kick to Brody's side, bringing another wave of pain, before bending down for the karambit knife in the snow. He inspected it for a moment, attempted to hold it somehow, and Brody found his chance: with great effort, he heaved himself to his feet and drew back a fist. The Russian dodged and brought the blade down clumsily at Brody's knuckles. The blood turned ice cold against the American's glove as he stepped back and clutched his fingers. Nikolay slashed again, slicing the back of Brody's already injured hand, before sending a fist straight for the side of his face. Brody managed to catch himself this time at the ground, frantically searching for a weapon with his left eye as the other swelled shut.

The next slash was disrupted—the swing of a tire iron swatted the weapon from Nikolay's grip. Brody was now on his feet and circling, with one good eye and one good hand left to fight with, as his opponent glared him down with a toothy sneer.

"That's what I like to see," he grunted, catching the weapon mid-thrust and wrenching it away. "You're no quitter."

He swung with another iron fist, just dodged. Brody struck back at the chest with his good hand, but the bear of a man hardly even reacted. Another punch, now against the nose, sent Brody stumbling onto the cabin porch behind him. After he struck the wooden wall a cold, sticky sensation enveloped the back of his head and neck. A few gunshots rang out from inside the building, followed by the cracking of wood and the shattering of glass. Yuri's muffled voice came through, loud and outraged.

Head throbbing, Brody almost failed to dodge the boot heel coming down on his forehead. He rose as sharply as he could and dodged the blade of a hunting knife before sending a punch of his own. It connected, sending Nikolay reeling and dropping his weapon. Brody managed to retrieve the tire iron from the ground before striking the gloved hands clutched over his opponent's face.

The Russian looked up—jaw swollen, nose twisted and eyes alight with fire—and leapt forward at the mercenary, tackling him to the snow. Brody found himself flat on his back with Nikolay's knee on his sternum and both hands grasped around his throat.

"American pig!" Nikolay snarled, grip tightening. "We used to flay fuckers like you alive back in Hawaii." Brody groped around at his side for something to defend himself with as he gasped for breath. His fingers clutched around something solid, and he caught a small glint of the cold floodlamps from beside him—the hunting knife.

The Russian loosened his hold, long enough for his victim to draw breath, only to clench harder and lift, bringing Brody to his feet and slamming him into the cabin wall. Nikolay bared his bloody teeth in a wide grin, eyes burning with sadistic glee. "We'd take a prisoner out into camp every week and I'd beat them to death with my bare hands." He looked up at the hovel and his smile faltered once a sound from inside reached his ears: his boss' screaming.

Brody's head swam, his lungs threatened to collapse and his grip held as he reared his knife back and rammed the blade into Nikolay's eye.

The man released his grip and staggered back with a howl of agony. His hands were clasped over his left eye, blood spurting between his fingers and dribbling into the snow.

Brody was on his hands and knees now, gasping at the freezing air as the incessant screaming filled his ears. With much difficulty, he brought himself to his feet with the icy tire iron in hand, staring down the once-imposing Nikolay—hunched over, hood down, hands still over his face, still wailing. With his good hand, he raised the tire iron high and brought it down on the back of the Russian's bald head.

The screaming stopped, and Nikolay went still.

For what felt like minutes, Brody leaned against the cabin and stared out into the cold void above Nikolay's motionless form, shuddering and heaving, karambit in hand.

With a low creak, the cabin door opened. Brody turned to see Yuri in the sickly yellow light of the foyer, one hand on Tsaryov's pistol and the other clutching his side. He stood slack-jawed, eyes flicking between his partner and the fallen giant in the snow.

"Tsaryov's gone."

Brody shot up with a sudden surge of energy. "What?"

"Fucker stabbed me with my own knife and ran out back before I could get anything useful out of him."

Brody pushed past Yuri into the house, noticing that the hand against his side was not glove-clad, but caked in blood. Indeed, the small abode was devoid of any other souls—two thugs once living were slumped over the couch and gutted. Past the entryway to the back of the cabin was a small kitchenette, where another gopnik lay bludgeoned against the sink and the open back door shuddered in the winter wind. A trail of blood made its way from the foot of the staircase nearby to the open doorway, smeared, still reflective and fresh.

"Go after him and bring him here," Yuri said, leaning up against the wall with a wince, "I will stay here and keep the cabin secure. Those gopniki around the place must have heard the gunshots."

Brody took up Yuri's flashlight from the floor and a handgun from a dead delinquent's hand before dashing out the rear entrance into the cold once more.

In place of any more rickety wooden buildings stood an imposing tree line; coated white firs towered mere yards in front of him, marking the edge of the uncharted wilderness. A trail of boot prints, tinted pink by blood and fresh snow, made a beeline for the nearest gap in the foliage. A man such as Tsaryov—bleeding out and unable to line up a decent shot to save his life—could not have chosen a worse method of escape, Brody thought as he trudged through the snow beneath the trees.

Through the beam of his flashlight Brody could see ancient metal signs, or in some cases deteriorated metal posts, every ten yards or so. What lettering or symbols remained were rendered illegible from years of moisture and neglect. In the darkness behind them, a glade developed where a low grunting became audible and a silhouette appeared before the dim orange flicker of a match or lighter.

Tsaryov was on his hands and knees in the snow, tugging at something on the ground and muttering to himself. He turned around at the presence of Brody's flashlight, wide-eyed and shivering like a wounded animal against a metal hatch in the ground underneath him, lighter gripped in his hand. His nose was visibly broken, purple and swollen, the serpent twisted, and his frightened grimace put a broken tooth on display. Several facial piercings had been forcibly removed, with dried blood and scarring in their place. One hand was clutched at a stab wound on his flank, sticky and dark with blood.

He reached into his coat and brandished a switchblade with a snarl. "_You stay the fuck away from me!_"

Gunfire rang out from the distant sawmill, a series of dull pops in the blizzard.

Brody could not hide his contempt as he stalked towards the defenseless drug lord, tattoo square in his pistol sights. "Drop it." Makar was forced to obey by a shot to a tree behind him. He flinched, but was otherwise frozen to the spot, terrified and trembling. Brody resisted the overwhelming urge to fire a second shot into his face or even cap him in the knee, keeping the goal of the payment in mind. "Stand up." The man hesitated, still scared stiff. "Do I need to say it twice? _Stand the fuck up!_" Makar scrambled off of the hatch and stood on shaky legs, hands in the air. Brody circled around, never taking the flashlight or the gun barrel from his target, until he had the small of his back in his sights. "Now walk."

• • •

The cabin's back door opened on cue as Tsaryov approached it. Yuri peeked his head out at him and glowered. Brody flicked off his flashlight from behind his captive and prodded him along into the building. Yuri glared Tsaryov down, assault rifle in hand, and with the barrel he pointed to the now vacant couch in the middle of the foyer, cleared of corpses. Brody noticed several dead gopniki sprawled out across the room that had not been present before he left.

Tsaryov crept along, Brody behind him, and Yuri allowed him to take his time. Once he was seated, Yuri approached him, and with a dull _crack_ slammed the butt of his rifle across his face. A bloody tooth clattered across the room.

"You're giving us our full cut, not 'my half,'" Yuri growled. "Now, take your coat off."

The drug lord did not say a word of protest; he only stared his captors down with scorn as he unzipped his hooded jacket and tossed it to the ground with a low _thunk._ His torso was exposed to the cold now, pale and emaciated, covered in Russian mafia tattoos, with a portrait of the Virgin Mary inked on his hairless chest.

Brody took up the jacket from the floor and walked it over to the dusty kitchen table where the stolen Desert Eagle handgun lay.

Yuri began his interrogation in a low rasp, with Tsaryov providing little more than bitter or sarcastic retorts.

Brody fished around in the coat's interior and emptied it out. Beside the gun he placed down a handful of .44 ammunition, a bloodied switchblade, a cellular phone, and one item that caught his eye: the lighter. It was expertly crafted, depicting a bald eagle flying over a mountainous landscape. Out of Yuri's line of sight, he pocketed it and took up the firearm, finding the latter to be surprisingly lightweight.

A shrill cry broke his concentration. He turned around to see Yuri with his rifle in one hand and a claw hammer in the other. Tsaryov sat in the chair hyperventilating, squinting back tears, hands tied, and with a dark red spot on his right kneecap growing fast. Yuri placed the hammer on his other knee.

"You'd better fucking tell me where it is or you won't even be hobbling anymore!"

Tsaryov could not bring himself to speak, only huff in pain.

"Yuri," Brody said, "there's an old hatch in the ground out back. Maybe it's—"

"No," Tsaryov struggled to say, "th—that's just contraband, I swear. Some guns, mostly drugs. Probably not much use to men like yourselves." Yuri reared the hammer back. "The money's upstairs! Under the carpet there's a little floor safe, but—!"

Yuri lowered the hammer slowly, looking back at his partner with brow cocked. "'But' what?"

The drug lord's face turned pale—whichever parts were not turned purple and blue, at any rate. He murmured, "But… p—put the hammer down, please…"

Yuri tossed the hammer aside. Makar drew a breath.

"I only have one hundred thousand on hand."

Yuri stared, his fingers tightening around the stock of his gun. "_What?_"

"M—my boss was going to get you the rest…"

Yuri swung a fist against his face.

"He has more!" Tsaryov choked out, "Much more. You let me live and I'll have him double the pay. An extra two hundred thousand. No, f—four hundred. Fuck!"

"That's a lot of money. Who's your boss?"

He spat out another tooth. "Lavrenti Komarov."

Something went off in Brody's head—a shotgun blast, a bombshell. He stormed up to Tsaryov, heaving with a newfound anger, and sent the pistol barrel straight to his right cheek, gashing it open. How he wished to see this man truly suffer now.

Yuri was the one to go pale now as he gawked at the scrawny man. "Bullshit!"

Tsaryov heaved. "I promise, I'm not lying to you," he said, able to do little but mutter from his left side.

Yuri looked back at the looted jacket across the room. "Victor, bring me that phone over there." He took up the phone from his partner's hands and shoved it into Makar's. "Show me. Call him, turn on the speakerphone." He lifted the rifle, placing the barrel squarely at his chest. "And don't be sly about it."

Tsaryov dialed the number in with shaky hands. The line on the other end rang a few times before a click sounded.

_"__Komarov speaking."_ The voice was vaguely familiar, but like Tsaryov's face it brought nothing to Brody's mind beyond rage. He looked at Yuri, who turned yet another shade whiter at the name.

"Hello, boss? It's me."

_"__Makar? You sound nervous."_

Tsaryov's gaze flicked between Brody and Yuri's rifle barrel. "I have a pair of f—fine gentlemen who wanted you to introduce yourself to them. And… and bring them the other half of their pay."

Komarov took pause. _"How much?"_

Yuri held up three fingers.

"One—three hundred thousand."

Komarov spent a long minute speaking with someone away from the phone, voice muffled and indistinct. At long last, he replied. _"I will send someone over. Stay where you are."_ Before he could receive a response, he closed the line. Makar allowed his head to hang, shuddering, blood running down his tattooed chest.

Yuri's mouth was agape. "_Holy fuck…_" He held up his client by the hair. "You've got a hotline to the head of the Bratva?" Tsaryov only stared, eyes unfocused and dark. "Fuck." Yuri let go, stepped back and heaved the phone across the room, where it collided with the door and exploded into electronics and plastic shards. Makar flinched. "_Fuck! We're fucked, Victor!_" His voice sounded raw, on the verge of despair. "We're getting the fuck out of here. Look after Tsaryov, I'm getting the money."

Brody watched as he stormed up the staircase, and once he was out of sight turned his eyes to Tsaryov. The man turned his head up, only to have the barrel of his own gun pressed against his forehead.

"Where's your boss?" Brody demanded in English, doing all in his power to not pull the trigger. Tsaryov could only look up at first, eyes brooding. The barrel was shoved forward, upturning the man's bloody, broken face. How gratifying it was to see this smug bastard so crushed, so pathetic. "Where is he?"

Tsaryov mumbled out an address, slurred but placeable—somewhere deep within Moscow. "N—not his place, his partner's. It's all I have. I don't know where Lav lives, I swear to God. Popov-Yakimenko Industries, gun makers. Nadya Yakimenko is who you want, she's the CEO. That pistol you've got is a gift from her, you know."

Brody thought on it a moment. There it was: a lead at last. The messenger was so weak now, as well as useless. Brody curled his finger around the trigger and pulled.

The gun's slide locked with a resounding _clack_. No ammunition.

Tsaryov opened his eyes, alight with relief, and Brody reared the gun back. He swung down on his face once, then again. Again, and again, and again. Each strike was harder than the last, and each whittled down the side of the man's face, long past the end of any struggling.

A pair of hands wrenched him back, and Brody found himself screaming. He brought himself back and heaved as the red mist faded away. Tsaryov lay before him, motionless. His head was tilted back, mouth hanging open in a silent cry, blood soaking his entire front left side. His right eye was glazed over, rolled back, while the other was nothing but a gaping, skinless socket. Half of his face was flayed apart, red, raw and unrecognizable. The serpent tattoo still wound down his nose, a vibrant green against his white and crimson face. The pistol was on the floor, chrome barrel soaked with blood and bits of flesh.

Brody had hit the hardwood as well, clutching his already-swollen eye with Yuri standing over him.

"You…"

Brody's head swam as he turned himself onto his back and stared up with a bleary eye. Yuri stood tight-fisted and could hardly speak; all he mustered was a low rasp, red in the face and on the verge of tears.

"What have you done? That—that piece of shit had three hundred thousand rubles on his head, and you… and you…"

"Yuri."

"You made me betray these people, Victor. What the hell is with you and Makar?"

"I don't remember—look, this isn't about the money."

"_The fuck it isn't!_"

"What would we have done with it, Yuri, huh? Shared it with the lowlife crackheads we live with?"

Yuri tried to speak, but any response caught in his throat.

"Think about it! Those scumbags would take their cut and blow it all on drugs, just like always, and where would that money end up going?" He jabbed a finger at Tsaryov's corpse. "Right back to that son of a bitch. Tsaryov wouldn't be losing jack shit, he'd be turning a profit with us!"

Yuri mulled on his words, steadily regaining his temper by the second. Soon enough he hoisted up a duffel bag of rubles from his side and looked at Makar's lifeless body. "We need to leave. I don't think the Bratva will be happy to find their drug pusher dead. Maybe we could make our escape back into the city before they arrive."

"We're not going to be safe anywhere, Yuri. A man as powerful as Komarov surely has men everywhere."

"We could at least try to—"

"To what? Hide out like a couple of cowards and wait for the issue to solve itself?" Brody sat himself up, gritting his teeth at a surge of pain in his side. "No, I know what we need to do. There's only one way to truly solve this: we need to cut the head from the snake."

Yuri stared down, eyes narrowing. "You don't mean—?"

"We just killed their attack dog, Yuri, think of close we are to reaching the top. Tsaryov had the head's personal number, for Christ's sake! I got a lead out of Tsaryov we can follow, an arms manufacturer."

"'We?' That's suicide, Victor! Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"You can come along with me or you can cower in the shithole we call home while I get gunned down at the Bratva's doorstep. It's your decision."

Yuri was silent for a time, looking around the decrepit home and thinking to himself, as Brody sat stone-faced and bruised. Hesitantly, at long last, he stepped forward and reached out his arm.

* * *

_To be continued..._


End file.
